5 Takeaways From North Carolina's Loss to the Orange

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SYRACUSE, NY – Tuesdays have been unkind to the North Carolina Tar Heels of late, a trend that continued in an 86-79 loss to Syracuse at JMA Wireless Dome on, of course, Tuesday night.

UNC went to Georgia Tech on a Tuesday in late January only to lose. It hosted Clemson last Tuesday and lost. And now it fell to the scorching-hot Orange who blistered the Tar Heels’ suddenly struggling defense to the tune of 62.5 percent shooting.

Hubert Davis’ team had no answers for the Orange, which also hit 47.1 percent from the perimeter. And the Heels led for just four minutes, including once in the second half at 65-64 after RJ Davis’ layup at with 7:16 left. However, one of UNC’s effective defensive possessions of the night turned into a disaster for the visitors, as J.J. Starling’s 40-foot bank off the glass fell through with 6:45 remaining.

Doing the math there, it’s clear Starling’s barely got off before the shot clock expired.

Carolina didn’t play well down the stretch, missing shots, turning over the ball, allowing too many offensive rebounds, and giving up some rare transition points.

RJ Davis led Carolina with 19 points while Cormac Ryan added 18, Armando Bacot had 14, as did Harrison Ingram.

The seventh-ranked Tar Heels dropped to 19-6 overall and 11-3 in the ACC. Syracuse improved to 16-9 and 7-7.

Here are five major takeaways from UNC’s loss at Syracuse:

Okay, a couple of lucky/fortunate shots went in for the Orange tonight, and they got two 3-pointers from a big man who had four on the season coming into the game. Yet, that doesn’t shake the reality that Carolina was bad defensively in this game. At times, it was downright awful.

The. Numbers. Do. Not. Lie: Syracuse shot 62.5 percent from the floor, the highest since a loss at Pitt in 2015. Syracuse shot better than 60 percent in both halves, also the first time an opponent has done that since Pitt nine years ago.

Five different times, the Orange made at least three consecutive shots. They made eight of their first 11 of the game, three of which were 3-pointers. They closed the first have converting four of their last five shots.

Syracuse opened the second half making eight of its first 12 from the field. And when UNC cut the margin to 62-61 with 9:09 left, Cuse made five of its next six shots.

It was 13-for-16 on layups, as little was challenged in the paint. And Syracuse never missed more than two shots in a row. It did that five times, including only twice in the second half.

UNC Coach Hubert Davis, to his credit, tried a lot of different things to stop the Orange, especially its guards, Judah Mintz (25 points) and J.J. Starling (23 points), but nothing worked because the Tar Heels just didn’t play well.

“Especially their guards, they were, we just didn't have an answer for them,” Hubert Davis replied when asked more specifically about problems containing Judah Mintz and J.J. Starling. “Obviously in the first half, their ability to create space to be able to get to the basket. They were hitting contested mid-range jump shots, but it was their depth in which they were getting into the lane that was causing us problems in the first half…

“And, I don't know what the time of it was when Starling hit the banked 40-footer, from that point on I just felt like we just could never catch back up. But their guards are really good tonight. Mintz and Starling and their ability, everybody, but in large part those two. We just didn't have an answer for them one-on-one.”

The main item on Syracuse’s scouting report, according to its radio color man, was RJ Davis. Stop him, and win the game.

So, the Orange were uber focused on not letting Davis get the ball, and as a result, he attempted one shot in nearly the first 14 minutes of the game, and he missed. By contrast, Cormac Ryan had attempted seven shots to that point. Ryan, who entered the game shooting 36.1 percent from the floor, including 29.4 percent from 3-point range, likely wasn’t near the top of the Orange’s scouting report.

Now, Ryan had a nice scoring game, netting 18 points on 6-for-14 shooting from the field, including 4-for-9 from the perimeter. But for UNC to be UNC, some of those shots must come from Davis, and the Cuse kept that from happening for much of the first half.

Davis had just three points at halftime, but thanks to a 17-4 run, the Heels were tied with the Orange at 42 apiece. However, had Davis gotten involved earlier, UNC could have been even more productive, possibly enough that it would have altered the circumstances of the last several minutes of the contest.

“They definitely went back into the typical Syracuse zone, and the wings were higher up,” the senior from White Plains, NY, said. “Whenever I was on the wing, they did a good job of having (Chris) Bell or (Quadir) Copeland being up a little bit to touch. Therefore, I wasn’t able to have a catch-and-shoot.”

In addition, Davis didn’t convert his second shot from the floor until 14:57 remained, and the three made it 52-46 Syracuse.

Carolina did so much to eliminate a 10-point deficit in the first half taking a three-point lead and then going into the locker room tied at 42-42. As hot as Syracuse was in the first half, that was a win for the Heels, who made 11 of their last 15 shots to close out the half.

Only it wasn’t a win because the Tar Heels didn’t lock down to open the second half, nor did they convert looks at the basket.

Syracuse opened the second half on an 8-1 spurt, putting UNC back seven points and basically erasing all it did to get a fresh 0-0 game at halftime. After closing the first half hot from the floor, UNC missed its first nine shots in the second half while the Cuse hit three straight shots – threes by Chris Bell and Starling, and a layup from Mintz – in the run.

Remember a few weeks ago when one of the Heels’ greatest attributes was how the regularly closed out opponents, flexing their veteran know-how? It’s as if the heist that robbed this team of its many intangibles also included playing smartest and best down the stretch of close games.

Last week at home versus Clemson, after tying the score at 70-70 with 4:12 remaining, the Tar Heels turned over the ball on their next three possessions. The Tigers, on the other hand, rolled off a 7-0 spurt to take control of the game while also scoring three times off offensive rebounds over the final four minutes in UNC’s 80-76 loss.

Tonight, in Syracuse’s cavernous home, UNC took a 65-64 lead after a Davis layup with 7:16 left. Syracuse, however, immediately responded with a 9-2 run. It was 3-for-3 from the field with two free throws in the spurt, while the Heels were 1-for-6.

And when it was 76-72 Cuse, Bacot blocked a shot in the lane by Starling with 2:05 remaining, Ryan turned over the ball three seconds later. The Heels then allowed on offensive rebound that led to a free throw and five-point Cuse lead with 1:37 remaining.

An Ingram turnover led to a pair of Syracuse free throws and a seven-point advantage with 1:07 left.

Ingram turned it over again seven seconds later leading to an Orange free throw and eight-point lead with 58 seconds to play.

Ryan hit a three cutting the margin to five, Davis missed a jumper ahead of a breakout by Syracuse for an 81-75 lead with 48 seconds left. A bucket by Ingram (81-77), free throw by Cuse (82-77), turnover by Ryan, free throw by Cuse (83-77), a flagrant one foul by Bacot soon followed, and the rest was history.

Little composure, sloppy with the ball, no defense, and two offensive rebounds that led to points are marks of a team that didn’t look well versed in those situations, only that not long ago it was one of the team’s greatest attributes.

“I think it’s a good test for us,” Cormac Ryan said. “We’ve been there before, we have to close out games better. It’s not something that you point a finger at one game versus the next, we have to execute better.”

It’s starting to happen again. Hubert Davis isn’t playing his bench much, and it could be a huge mistake by the third-year Carolina coach. Tuesday night was a lot like last year.

The bench curiously totaled only 27 minutes. Jae’Lyn Withers played better in the first half than he has in nearly a month scoring four points and grabbing a rebound in seven minutes. Jalen Washington hit a three in the first half and muscled up a put back, but played just 1:39 in the second half. Seth Trimble played 3:58 after halftime.

So, with the bench playing 5:37 in the second half, that means the starters logged 94:23.

The Heels looked tired down the stretch, like they did at Miami on Saturday. Davis recently missed a free throw in six straight games, a sign of being tired.

Note: UNC averaged plus-13.8 on the glass over the last nine games of its 10-game win streak, but is just plus-4.4 since. The defensive numbers have significantly dropped, too.

The bench played 28 minutes Tuesday, 32 minutes at Miami, 44 versus Clemson, 31 against Duke, 42 at Georgia Tech, and 39 at FSU over the last six games. That’s 36 minutes a game, meaning the starters have averaged 164 in the stretch.

The Tar Heels are now No. 331 in the nation in bench usage out of 353 teams.

If there is a valid criticism against Hubert Davis, it’s fair to say not using his bench enough, again, is one of them. Last year’s reserves wouldn’t have helped much. This year’s should get more minutes and would help quite a bit. That said, the starters appear tired, and it never should have come to that with still nearly a month left in the regular season.

“It’s been a tough stretch,” Bacot said. “We’ve played a lot of games, a lot of play.”