CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — North Carolina won its biggest game of the season at the best possible moment, with its NCAA Tournament hopes for an at-large bid teetering on the edge.
The Tar Heels jumped on No. 6 Virginia and never trailed in its 71-63 victory in the Dean E. Smith Center on Saturday. The win marked their first Quad 1 win in the NCAA Net rankings, a metric that will be one of several used by the NCAA Tournament committee when selecting teams.
North Carolina (18-11, 10-8 ACC) still has to finish strong, with a road trip to Florida State on Monday before the regular-season finale against Duke presents another Quad 1 opportunity.
Pete Nance was out with a back injury and Armando Bacot suffered an ankle injury about 90 seconds into Carolina’s loss at Virginia (21-6, 13-5) on Jan. 10. But both made a considerable difference against the Cavaliers' small lineup.
Nance scored a team-high 22 points, marking just the third time this season he’s surpassed the 20-point mark.
He was the player who had arguably taken the most heat given the Heels’ bubble status in that, as the graduate transfer who replaced Brady Manek in the starting lineup, he hadn’t provided the same kind of consistent 3-point shooting. For a large chunk of this month, some fans openly campaigned on social media for him to be replaced in the starting lineup by Puff Johnson.
Nance’s 3-point shooting had fallen to 28% and he’d made just four of his last 28 attempts spanning over the last nine games.
Until Saturday.
Nance scored the game’s first basket with a left corner 3-pointer and proceeded to make three more in the first half including one over Jayden Gardner just before the buzzer to cap off a 14-point first half.
Nance helped power the Heels’ 9-for-16 effort from 3-point range as they tied a season-high in conference play with 42 points in the first half.
The pace of the game slowed in the second half as neither team could find any sort of rhythm.
Virginia, which trailed by as many as 17 points in the first half, cut its deficit down to 52-43 and had the ball with a chance to make it a two possession game.
But when Kadin Shedrick was contested at the rim and missed a lob out of a timeout, the Heels were able to push their lead back to double digits, punctuated by a Nance dunk off a Bacot assist.
Nance wasn’t just active offensively. He recorded a season-high four blocked shots including one on a Ryan Dunn dunk attempt that left him flexing afterward.
R.J. Davis added 16 points and 10 rebounds and four assists. Bacot, who was hampered by foul trouble in the second half, finished with 11 points and six rebounds.
