Preview: UNC Looks To Bounce Back At Duke

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – On Wednesday night, the Pittsburgh Panthers defeated the UNC Tar Heels 65-64 by limiting North Carolina to only 35% of its field goal attempts at the Dean Smith Center

In Chapel Hill, the Panthers have won three straight games and five of the last six meetings with UNC. Only two other teams have ever won three straight games at the Smith Center: Duke from 1999 to 2002 and Wake Forest from 2002 to 2004

Following a full week off since its last game, which was on January 24th at Syracuse, UNC (15-7, 8-4 ACC) got off to a poor start. Due to a 13-4 advantage in offensive rebounds in the first 20 minutes, the Tar Heels only trailed by one at the break despite shooting  11 for 36 in the first half.

With 7:32 left in the game, Pittsburgh (16-7, 9-3 ACC) took on a 17-4 run in the second half to grab a 57-50 lead, which included three straight three-pointers from Cummings and three straight baskets by Burton. Later, after going on a 6-0 run to equalize the score at 61-61 with 3:49 remaining, Carolina let the game slip away by only making three free throws the rest of the way.

Nelly Cummings scored 21 points to lead the Panthers making 8 of his overall 11 shots and 5 of her 6 three-point attempts. In addition, Jamarius Burton scored 19. 

All-around scoring leader Caleb Love scored 22 points, including 13 in the opening period. In his 18 attempts, he made 8 of them, including 4 of 11 three-pointers.

The UNC basketball team is 15-6 overall and 7-3 in Atlantic Coast Conference play through the first month of the year. They have put themselves in a situation where they can get a solid seed in the NCAA Tournament and, ideally, have a successful run like they did last year.

The Tar Heels will head to Durham on Saturday night, February 4th, to battle against rival Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

This game is crucial for both teams with implications for the ACC Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. The two teams last played one other and the Tar Heels terminated Duke’s season in the 2022 Final Four.

Jon Scheyer, a first-year coach at Duke, and Hubert Davis, a second-year coach at UNC, will face off for the first time in this game. Additionally, this will be these two teams’ second encounter with one another being unranked since 2021.

UNC faced Duke three times last season, winning two of the three games and in what turned out to be Coach K’s final game. The Tar Heels defeated the Blue Devils in the Final Four about a month after UNC defeated Coach K in his final home game.

Against Pittsburgh, Caleb Love was the standout player for his team. Love has been starting to pick it up after being in a bit of a funk and hopefully will only get better as UNC will need a game like the one he had against Pitt when they face Duke. 

Love is averaging 16.2 points, and a field goal of 38.8%. His rookie season-high came in a victory over Duke. He has now faced the rival team in two of his three games with the highest scoring totals. He scored a career-high 25 points on February 6, 2021, to help him defeat Duke.

Until then, he had been scoring 10 points per game on average and shooting 35 percent from the field. He made 4 of 5 shots from beyond the arc that evening, shooting 56.3 percent overall. A month later, he repeated the pattern, scoring 18 points on 50% shooting and dishing out seven assists in UNC’s 18-point win.

An exciting battle to see is Bacot against Flipowski as both players were named Atlantic Coast Conference Men’s basketball player of the week a combined 9 times. Bacot is dominating the paint and setting school records, averaging 17.9, 11.4 rebounds, and has a 57.8 field goal percentage.

Freshman, Kyle Flipowski, is averaging 15.8 points and 9 rebounds. Flipowski and Bacot are providing big-time plays for their teams from the inside. Duke is at a loss with Dariq Whitehead being out due to a leg injury. However, Jeremy Roach and Flipowski are two valuable players who can both lead Duke.

Join the two rival teams as they face for the first time in this season at Cameron Indoor Stadium, on February 4th, at 6:30 PM.