UNC basketball comes to life late, but Tar Heels fall to Miami 80-72 in ACC home game

North Carolina felt a sense of urgency from a weak NCAA Tournament resume going into its game against No. 15 Miami on Monday.

They’ll be downright desperate now after going cold from 3-point line in an 80-72 loss to the Hurricanes in the Dean E. Smith Center.

Miami (21-5, 12-4 ACC) represented one of the Heels’ dwindling chances for a quality win, and now they’re at a point where they can’t take too many more good losses, either. Sunday’s game at N.C. State and Feb. 25 against Virginia are currently the only two Quad 1 games in the NCAA Net rankings they have remaining. Duke in the regular season finale could possibly qualify by the time March 4 arrives, but that’s it.

Carolina’s win over Ohio State had stood as a Quad 1 win, but the Buckeyes’ season has declined fast and fell into the Quad 2 category. It left the Heels with an 0-8 record in Quad 1 games, which could leave them outside of the NCAA Tournament’s at-large bids.

“I mean, we all watch TV, we all know what type of resume you got to put up to be in the tournament,” said UNC forward Armando Bacot, who was limited to 12 points and four rebounds. “We all know what’s at stake... This year, there’s not much room for anything at this point. We’ve got to be special.”

Carolina (16-10, 8-7)was special just on Saturday in its win over Clemson after draining a season-high tying 15 3-pointers. And when guard Caleb Love made the first 3-pointer he attempted for the first points in the game, it seemed the Tar Heels would stay hot.

That wasn’t the case, as they proceeded to miss their next 16 straight attempts from behind the arc. And it was truly a team effort. R.J. Davis, who led the team with 23 points, shot 2-for-7 from 3. Love, who had 20 points, went 2-for-12. Puff Johnson, Pete Nance, Tyler Nickel, D’Marco Dunn and Bacot, who was forced to take one with the shot clock set to expire; combined to go 0-for-10.

The Heels finished just 5-for-31 or 16.1 percent from behind the arc, which surpassed their season-low. The previous low was shooting 16.7 percent when they went 3-for-18 in their loss to Iowa State.

“For the most part they were good shots,” R.J. Davis said. “But we had an advantage down the paint, which helped us have a good first half. So we’ve just got to have a heavy emphasis on that the remainder of the season.”

The Heels compensated for those misses from deep in the first half as Miami couldn’t stop them from getting to the basket or getting in the lane for short jumpers. UNC scored 26 of their 40 points in the paint in the first half and shot 51 percent from the field. Despite going just 1-for-11 from 3-point range, UNC made 14 of 18 attempts from inside the arc in the first half.

All that dried up in the second half.

“In the second half, we tried to do that and they just did a better job of closing down that paint,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “The only way that you could open that up is to make some perimeter jump shots and we just weren’t able to do it. We had a number of good looks out there.”

Miami forward Norchad Omier did a good job of keeping Bacot from getting comfortable in the post. And when he couldn’t he had teammates hedging off their assignment to help double team. While he was in the game, Bacot either had to move to the perimeter to get the ball or he didn’t get it at all. That all changed when Omier picked up his second foul with 12 minutes left in the first half.

Bacot dominated once Omier was sidelined, scoring 10 points on 4-for-5 shooting in the first half. But it was Bacot who found himself in foul trouble in the second half.

Bacot picked up four fouls in just under a five minute stretch and was replaced in the game with 12:10 remaining and the Heels trailing 52-40.

“I thought the second half they just kind of really just dared us to make shots and it just didn’t go our way,” said Bacot, who added, “Shot-making at this level, that’s everything. You got to be able to knock down shots for anything to work.”

It wasn’t just the shooting.

Miami posed several matchup problems for the Heels. UNC put its top defender Leaky Black on leading scorer Isaiah Wong. That left fifth year senior Jordan Miller going against Nance and Johnson for most of the game and he scored a game-high 24 points.

“I didn’t think we had an answer for Jordan Miller, we just didn’t,” Hubert Davis said. “He dominated us on the offensive glass, in transition, in the post, dribble drive to the basket, on the perimeter. We just didn’t have anybody that could slow him down.”