Louisville's Upset Bid at North Carolina Falls Short
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Hitting the road to face the top team in the ACC, the Louisville men's basketball program could not play David to North Carolina's Goliath, suffering an 86-70 loss Wednesday night at the Dean E. Smith Center.
The Cardinals (6-11, 1-5 ACC) had been playing much better basketball over their last two games, upsetting Miami on the road and nearly pulling off an improbable comeback against NC State. But the No. 4 Tar Heels (14-3, 6-0 ACC), who are the last remaining undefeated team in ACC play and highest-ranked ACC team in the AP Poll, proved to be too much to overcome.
While Louisville did out-shoot North Carolina, connecting on 49.1 percent of their field goal attempts to 48.3 percent from their hosts, that's about the only category in which they held the advantage.
The Tar Heels drilled more three-point attempts (10-of-22 to 8-of-18), got to the free throw line with more consistency (18-of-24 to 6-of-13) and also out-rebounded (40-to-28) the Cardinals. UofL also committed 13 turnovers for 13 UNC points, compared to seven points of their own on 10 forced turnovers.
Louisville was led by a 16-point performance from Skyy Clark, while Brandon Huntley-Hatfield had 15 points and six rebounds, and Tre White finished with 12 points. North Carolina had five players crack double figures in scoring, led by a game-high 21 points from R.J. Davis.
Once again, Louisville found themselves behind the eight ball almost immediately. After trading buckets in the first couple minutes with North Carolina, the Tar Heels then fired off a 17-2 run to take a commanding 15-point lead just 7:21 into the game. In fact, UNC connected on 11 of their first 15 shot attempts of the game, while UofL hit just five of their first 20 shots.
Louisville did hang with North Carolina for a little bit in the first half, as they found a slight offensive groove and were able to drain six of their last 12 attempts of the first half. However, while the Tar Heels had a segment where they missed eight straight shots, they took advantage of poor perimeter defense and nine first half turnovers by the Cardinals to hit six of their last 11 shots and go into halftime with a 46-29 lead.
When the two teams came out of the locker room for the second half, it was Louisville who was firing on all cylinders on both ends of the floor. They sunk nine of their first 10 shots of the half, held North Carolina to just three of their first 12, and used a 21-9 run to pull within five and have their hosts on the ropes.
However, that would be as close as the Cardinals would get to pulling off the upset bid. The Tar Heels countered with a 10-2 run to keep their visitors back at arm's length, then put an exclamation mark on the game by scoring 14 of the final 21 points.
Next up, Louisville will stay in the state of North Carolina and travel up to Winston-Salem for a matchup with Wake Forest. Tip-off against the Demon Deacons is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 20 at 12:00 p.m. EST.
(Photo of Kaleb Glenn: Bob Donnan - USA TODAY Sports)
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