NEW YORK — The stage was set for a third North Carolina-Duke matchup, but Virginia Tech just had to go and steal the spotlight. The Hokies snapped the Tar Heels’ six game winning streak with a 72-59 win the ACC tournament semifinals.
The Heels started off slow offensively for a second straight game. Against Virginia in the quarterfinals, they made up for not having a great shooting night by shutting down the Cavaliers offense. UNC couldn’t do the same against the Hokies.
Virginia Tech took control of the game when it started the second half on a 9-0 run to grab a 15-point lead and the Heels never really recovered afterwards.
The Hokies, not Carolina, will now advance to play Duke in the ACC tournament championship game on Saturday night. Virginia Tech was in a similar position as Carolina was a week ago with a NCAA Tournament resume that left it in bubble conversation.
Thanks to the Heels, the Hokies should now be safely in with an at-large bid unless they earn the automatic one by winning the title.
Carolina (24-9) now will look to regroup heading into the NCAAs.
Here’s what we learned from the Heels’ loss:
3-point matters
Carolina held the Hokies 3-point shooters in check during their regular season wins, most notably holding them to 5-for-19 shooting during its win in Blacksburg. But not only did VT shoot 9 of 20 from behind the arc, this time, Carolina was the team that couldn’t find its mark.
The Heels averaged 37% from 3 entering the game, but made just three of their first 20 attempts and finished shooting 11.5%. The only time they shot a lower percentage was after going 1 for 13 in their loss to Kentucky.
What had been a strength for Carolina — that it had multiple players who are legit shooters — just meant that no one could find their range on Friday. Caleb Love, who scored 22 at home against the Hokies and 21 in their win in Blacksburg, was 2 for 10. R.J. Davis went 1 for 6. Brady Manek was 0 for 5. Puff Johnson and Leaky Black also missed a combined four attempts.
Manek fell back to Earth
Manek had made scoring look easy during the Heels six game winning streak entering Friday. He was averaging 18.3 points per game while shooting 43.9% from 3-point range.
Against the Hokies, his prolonged heat check came to an end. After missing his first four 3-pointers, he changed up and started going inside for baskets. He was able to finish with 10 points but he never had the game-changing shots that UNC was accustomed to seeing him make.
Tournament experience
Black and Manek are the only two players on UNC’s roster that have won an NCAA Tournament game. And Black is the only one who has in a Carolina uniform. He was a freshman on the 2018-19 team that advanced to the Sweet 16 before losing to Auburn.
While Manek played for Oklahoma his teams never advanced past the first weekend. His Sooners’ teams lost to No. 1 seed Virginia as a freshman in 2019 and last season lost to No. 1 seed Gonzaga.
Carolina could be in a position in which it's playing in the 8-9 seed game and potentially face a No. 1 seed.
