By Adam Lucas 1. Frustrating end to the season in Milwaukee, as Carolina falls to Ole Miss 71-64.
2. If you’ve watched this team, you’ve seen that game. For one of many times this year, Carolina played poorly and found itself with a 22-point deficit, then had to furiously rally to try to claw back into it. They got as close as two on a three-point play from RJ Davis with 1:09 left, but Sean Pedulla answered with a three-pointer. The Virginia Tech transfer had 14 second half points and 20 for the game. In many ways, Pedulla–a very solid player–is the story of the ACC-SEC relationship in basketball right now. There was a time when he would’ve been a four-year Hokie and turned into an All-ACC player. In the modern era, though, he transfers to an SEC school that finished seventh in the SEC to take advantage of NIL opportunities and will play into the next round. Three of Ole Miss’s top six players (its three players who scored in double figures) are ACC transfers. The league can’t simply sit by and keep doing the same thing and hope it gets better as the thing that made it special withers away. And ultimately, of course, it’s up to Carolina to be competitive in this new reality and maintain the standard. They still had plenty of chances to win this particular game and there are plenty of reasons why (see the 13 points below). Long-term, though, it’s a story to watch.
3. Big sequence late in the second half when the Heels missed back to back layups in a four-point game. That was part of a stretch when they shot 2-for-9 on layups over an eight minute span. Carolina started 10-for-15 on layups, but they made just 4-for-12 on layups and dunks in the final 15:30 of the game. Ole Miss’s physicality played a role in some of those misses, as the Heels very rarely got a clean look.
4. Hubert Davis has talked recently about how during the stretch of better play, Carolina was a much more connected team. It looked disconnected on Friday, symbolized by a play in the second half. After the longer than normal halftime break, the Heels came out and allowed an offensive rebound bucket by completely whiffing on a box out. On the next play, Elliot Cadeau tried to inbound the ball from the baseline and miscommunicated with Seth Trimble, tossing the ball directly to Pedulla for an easy layup. It was that kind of afternoon.
5. As has been the storyline for most of this season, three-point shooting was decisive. Coming off a win over San Diego State in which it made a season-high 14 three-pointers, Carolina finished five of 24 from three. For the season, that means it finished 2-9 when hitting less than 30 percent from the three-point line.
6. Carolina played a very bad first half. Ole Miss looked like the tougher, more competitive team for the full 20 minutes and built a 44-26 lead. RJ Davis went 4-for-8 in the first half and the rest of the team was a combined 5 for 18.
7. The Rebels started hot from three-point range, firing in six of their first seven attempts. They cooled off after that, but Carolina wasn’t able to counter, going 3-for-11 from the arc. Another subtle issue: free throws, where Carolina made just 5-for-10 in the first half, including missing two front ends of one-and-one opportunities. 8. Ole Miss actually missed its final seven shots of the first half. That was a stretch that took 3:08; Carolina cut zero points off the deficit during that span. 9. Ole Miss entered the game as the second-worst rebounding team in the Power Four. But it was extremely effective at keeping the Heels off the glass, especially the offensive boards in the first half. Carolina collected just one offensive rebound in the first half, and that came from Cadeau. It was more active in the second half, grabbing seven offensive rebounds on 20 missed field goals. The Rebels won the overall rebounding battle, 40-34. Carolina finished 5-10 this season when getting outrebounded. 10. The first-half lethargy became–as you knew it would be–problematic when Carolina made the run you knew it would make in the second half. When the Heels made a push, they were trying to come back from 22 points down instead of, say, 12 down. Any push in the first half would have made it more manageable. That stretch when Ole Miss went 0-for-7 but the Heels made no progress was a killer.
11. Carolina certainly leaves Milwaukee concerned about Jae’Lyn Withers, who suffered an ankle injury that kept him out of most of the second half. He went to the locker room and did not return.
12. Friday marks the final game for RJ Davis, one of the greatest scorers in UNC history. Davis scored 15 points but went 6-for-17 from the field and 1-for-8 from three on a tough afternoon.
13. Friday marked just the fourth game in program history in the state of Wisconsin. The other three were a pair of losses in the 1941 NCAA Tournament (the first two NCAA Tournament games in UNC history), and the other was a win at the Mecca Arena over Marquette in 1986 on the day after the inaugural game in the Smith Center. That’s right–the Tar Heels won a game against Duke, went to the airport, flew to Milwaukee, won another game, and then flew home. 14. Friday’s game renewed a long-dormant series. Ole Miss won in 1923 and Carolina won in 1926. Both those games were in the Southern Conference tournament. 15. With the expanded field to 68 teams this gets a little messy, but it’s just Carolina’s third loss ever in the round of 64. The other two were in 1999 against Weber State and 2021 against Wisconsin. The only positive from this day is that the Tar Heels went to the Final Four after both those seasons…and unfortunately, now the only thing left to think about is next season.
