UNC played in the last game of a long Quarterfinal Thursday at the ACC Tournament, but the Tar Heels made an early evening of it.
UNC throttled Virginia, building a 20-point lead at the half and cruising to a 63-43 win over the hapless Cavaliers. The Tar Heels advance to play Virginia Tech on Friday for a berth in the championship game.
The 43 points were the fewest UNC has allowed in the ACC Tournament in the shot clock era and the fewest an opponent has scored against the Heels since 1982.
The Tar Heels shut down Virginia in the first half. The Cavaliers made just 5 of 27 shots in the opening 20 minutes and hit the break with 13 points, an ACC Tournament low for the shot clock era.
“We came out and played hard,” said Brady Manek. “Coming in, we knew if we came out punching first, played harder played tougher, that would be the result.”
“Our physicality from the beginning and our intensity took them out of their flow,” Leaky Black said. “They’re a rhythm team. Our physicality really made them struggle.”
UNC’s Brady Manek had 19 points at the half, becoming just the second Tar Heel in history to outscore a team for a half by himself. Reggie Bullock did it against Maryland in 2013.
“I was making shots,” Manek said. “They were finding me on back cuts. I was picking and popping, finding the open spots. Caleb (Love), RJ (Davis), Leaky and even Armando (Bacot) hit me with back door passes … A lot of my shots don’t come from what I do, it’s what everybody else does for me.
Manek finished with a game-high 21. But it was UNC’s first half defense that put the game away early.
Black played shut down defense on UVA point guard Kihei Clark, who missed all four shots in the first half and finished with just seven points to go with three turnovers against the taller Black.
“He’s been there four years. He’s the one that gets them in their offense,” Black said. “(Coach Hubert Davis) told me I was the one getting Kihei, and that was it.”
“Every shot they took, we were in position to contest it,” Davis said. “I liked the job Leaky did on Clark, but it wasn’t just Leaky’s defense. Everybody else was locked in. Because we were so good defensively—I don’t think we were that good offensively outside of Brady—it allowed us to be really good.”
The win was UNC’s sixth straight, including an upset of Duke in the regular season finale last weekend.
“People were saying, ‘How are you going to bounce back and adjust from the emotions of the game this past Saturday?’” Davis said. “I didn’t understand that. It was an emotional game, but it was just a game.”
Rather than worrying about how to recover from the big win over Duke, Davis used it as motivation for his team.
“He kept using the word validation,” said Black. “Validating the fact that we were a good team from the beginning and we were just waiting for our moment to show it. We showed it today.”
“We played really well last Saturday,” Davis clarified. “Let’s validate the win we had last Saturday by playing extremely well today.
Mission accomplished.
“I’m not surprised,” Black said. “I feel like we should do this more often.”
