By R.L. Bynum
NEW YORK — A pair of teams with the potential to win the national championship put on a March-type battle in a special atmosphere similar to an NCAA tournament game.
In the end, it was No. 5 UConn, full of players who won the title last season, who showed more poise down the stretch to beat No. 9 North Carolina 87–76 in the Jimmy V Classic at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.
“We are upset that we lost, but it’s eight games in,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “I see much we can get better. So that’s encouraging for our team because we are going to get better.”
It was almost back to an iron five for Carolina (7–2), with only one reserve — Seth Trimble — playing double-digit minutes.
“The guys that I played tonight are the guys that I played,” said Coach Davis, who got four points from his bench compared to UConn getting 11 from its reserves. “It wasn’t anything deeper than that. Just playing the guys that I felt like put us in a position — depending on the scenario of the game — that gave us the best chance to win.”
RJ Davis scored 19 of his team-high 26 points after halftime, when Armando Bacot scored only two of his 13 points.
“I thought in the first half, we were able to get Armando the ball in space, and he finished around the basket and was able to get to the free throw line,” Coach Davis said. “They’ve got tremendous size, and then they started double-teaming in late, and we had some wide-open looks, and we just didn’t knock it down today.”
Cormac Ryan missed all six 3-point attempts, was a team-low -18, and wasn’t much of a factor. If he had gotten hot from the perimeter down the stretch, it could have been a different game. The rest of the team wasn’t bad from outside the arc, going 7 of 14, led by four from RJ Davis and three from Harrison Ingram.
Davis was the only reliable scorer for most of the second half, and only Ingram (20 points, five assists) and Bacot (13 rebounds and five assists for his 73rd career double-double) added significant offense.
Cam Stewart led the Huskies (8–1) with 23 points, three 3-pointers, seven rebounds and six assists, with Alex Karaban adding 18 points, four rebounds and two assists.
“They do a really good job executing,” Hubert Davis said. “In the first half, in terms of any off-the-ball action, we were switching one through four because they have so much screening, we thought it put us in a position to protect the paint and contest the 3.”
With UConn in foul trouble, the opportunity was there for Carolina to win the game at the free-throw line in the second half. But the Tar Heels were only 3 of 8 from the line in the second half and 9 of 16 for the game for a season-low 59.1%.
“The second half, we started picking up full court, started doubling ball screens, and that sped them up and took them out of rhythm,” Coach Davis said. “I think that’s a huge reason why we were able to cut it to five and get it to six; just couldn’t get over that hump. And it’s the first time all year that we hadn’t shot the ball well from the free-throw line.”
UConn coach Danny Hurley said that he thought that the length of 7–2 center Donovan Clingan and the quickness of Samson Johnson bothered Bacot.
“We just made it tougher on him, made his catches a little bit more off the block,” UConn coach Danny Hurley said. “I think maybe he got a little bit worn down, a little bit tired as well, which helped.”
Ingram didn’t shoot until a 3-pointer with 9:59 left in the first half and scored all but three of his points in the following 17 minutes.
Neither team led by more than four points in the first 7½ minutes, but UNC didn’t hold a first-half lead after the first 4½ minutes. UConn was up by seven midway through the half and by 10 with 1:40 left after a 10–1 run.
UNC responded by finishing the first half with a 7–2 run. Ingram’s 3-pointer with four seconds left trimmed the Huskies’ halftime lead to 44–39.
Clingan picked up his third foul in the first 26 seconds of the second half, but a 13–4 Huskies run gave them a 13-point lead 3½ minutes after halftime. But even after Tristen Newton picked up his third, the foul trouble didn’t throw off UConn that much.
RJ Davis had a 3-pointer, steal and layup in 15 seconds on an 8–0 run as the Heels sliced the lead to five with 12:03 left after rolling out the diamond press with brief success.
The Huskies seized control with a 14–3 run, as a Clingan layup gave them a 17-point lead with 3:05 left.
NOTES — Carolina heads into the 11-day exam break before facing No. 16 Kentucky at the CBS Sports Classic in Atlanta at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 16 (CBS). The Wildcats (6–2), who lost Saturday at home 80–73 to UNC Wilmington, play once before that game, visiting Penn at noon Saturday (ESPN2). … One of the referees was Kip Kissinger, who worked the 93–86 OT win over Baylor in the second round of the 2022 NCAA tournament, a game with plenty of questionable officiating. … Carolina still leads the all-time series with UConn 5-2. … RJ Davis has scored 26 or more points in four straight games, the fifth time a UNC player has done it and the first to do so in 53 years (Charlie Scott did it 12 straight games in 1970, Lennie Rosenbluth did it four games in a row and 10 straight games, Bobby Lewis did it seven consecutive games and Billy Cunningham had a five-game streak with 26 or more points). … Davis is the first Tar Heel to lead the team in scoring in five straight games since Justin Jackson did it six consecutive games during the 2016–17 season. … The Huskies’ only previous win over UNC was an 86–54 victory in Storrs, Conn., on Jan. 19, 2002, when Matt Doherty was Carolina’s head coach. … Carolina fell to 1–2 in the Jimmy V Classic after beating UMass 83-69 on Dec. 20, 1996, and losing to Indiana 82-73 on Dec. 21, 1999, with both early games played at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, N.J.
No. 5 UConn 87, No. 9 UNC 76
UNC lineup combinations
| Score | Time | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Segment score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starters | 20:00 | Cadeau | Davis | Ryan | Ingram | Bacot | 8–9 |
| 8–9 | 15:15 | Davis | Trimble | 8–9 | |||
| 16–18 | 12:30 | Cadeau | Withers | 0–0 | |||
| 16–18 | 11:32 | Washington | 0–3 | ||||
| 16–21 | 10:44 | Davis | Ingram | 5–2 | |||
| 21–23 | 8:17 | Wojcik | Ingram | Bacot | 2–4 | ||
| 23–27 | 5:45 | Ryan | 9–10 | ||||
| 32–37 | 2:18 | Davis | Trimble | 4–7 | |||
| 36–44 | 27.8 | Cadeau | Davis | 13–16 | |||
| 49–60 | 14:33 (2nd) | Davis | Trimble | 2–2 | |||
| 51–62 | 13:00 | Ingram | Withers | Washington | 9–3 | ||
| 60–65 | 10:44 | Bacot | 0–2 | ||||
| 60–67 | 9:48 | Cadeau | Davis | 3–2 | |||
| 63–69 | 8:15 | Ryan | Ingram | 0–6 | |||
| 63–75 | 6:21 | Wojcik | 3–2 | ||||
| 66–77 | 5:18 | Davis | Trimble | 8–8 | |||
| 74–85 | 1:39 | Cadeau | Davis | Trimble | 2–2 | ||
| 76–87 | Final |
UNC season statistics
| Date | Month/day | Time | Opponent/event (current ranks) | TV/ record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October | ||||
| 24 | Friday | L, 78–76 | vs. No. 10 BYU in SLC | Exhib. |
| 29 | Wednesday | W, 95–53 | vs. Winston-Salem St. | Exhib. |
| November | ||||
| 3 | Monday | W, 94–54 | vs. Central Arkansas | 1–0 |
| 7 | Friday | W, 87–74 | vs. No. 17 Kansas | 2–0 |
| 11 | Tuesday | W, 89–74 | vs. Radford | 3–0 |
| 14 | Friday | W, 97–53 | vs. N.C. Central | 4–0 |
| 18 | Tuesday | W, 73–61 | vs. Navy | 5–0 |
| Fort Myers Tip-Off | ||||
| 25 | Tuesday | W, 85–70 | vs. St. Bonaventure | 6–0 |
| 27 | Thursday | L, 74–58 | vs. No. 9 Michigan State | 6–1 |
| December | ACC/SEC Men’s Challenge | |||
| 2 | Tuesday | W, 67–64 | at Kentucky | 7–1 |
| ————————— | ||||
| 7 | Sunday | W, 81–61 | vs. Georgetown | 8–1 |
| 13 | Saturday | W, 80–62 | vs. USC Upstate | 9–1 |
| 16 | Tuesday | W, 77–58 | vs. East Tennessee State | 10–1 |
| CBS Sports Classic in Atlanta | ||||
| 20 | Saturday | 3 p.m. | vs. Ohio State | CBS |
| ————————— | ||||
| 22 | Monday | 8 p.m. | vs. East Carolina | ACCN |
| 30 | Tuesday | 7 p.m. | vs. Florida State | ESPN2 |
| January | ||||
| 3 | Saturday | 2:15 | at SMU | The CW |
| 10 | Saturday | 6 p.m. | vs. Wake Forest | ACCN |
| 14 | Wednesday | 9 p.m. | at Stanford | ACCN |
| 17 | Saturday | 4 p.m. | at California | ACCN |
| 21 | Wednesday | 7 p.m. | vs. Notre Dame | ESPN2 |
| 24 | Saturday | 2 or 2:30 | at No. 23 Virginia | ESPN or ESPNU |
| 31 | Saturday | 2 p.m. | at Georgia Tech | ACCN |
| February | ||||
| 2 | Monday | 7 p.m. | vs. Syracuse | ESPN |
| 7 | Saturday | 6:30 | vs. No. 3 Duke | ESPN |
| 10 | Tuesday | 7 p.m. | at Miami | ESPN or ESPN2 |
| 14 | Saturday | 2 p.m. | vs. Pittsburgh | ESPN |
| 17 | Tuesday | 7 p.m. | at N.C. State | ESPN or ESPN2 |
| 21 | Saturday | 1 p.m. | at Syracuse | ABC |
| 23 | Monday | 7 p.m. | vs. No. 11 Louisville | ESPN |
| 28 | Saturday | 6:30 or 8:30 | vs. Virginia Tech | ESPN or ESPN2 |
| March | ||||
| 3 | Tuesday | 7 p.m. | vs. Clemson | ESPN or ESPN2 |
| 7 | Saturday | 6:30 | at No. 3 Duke | ESPN |
| 10–14 | Tues.-Sat. | ACC tournament | Spectrum Center, Charlotte |
Photo via @UNC_Basketball
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