North Carolina came away with the win Tuesday night, but it was not their best outing so far. The final score was 78-64.
For UNC to go deep into the tournament, they will have to start hitting three-pointers and shooting less of them. They took 27 threes and only hit 5 of them against Wake. That is 18.5% from behind the arc. That will not cut it by anyone's standards. Teams will start to realize the way to beat North Carolina is to play a zone and dare them to shoot the three. UNC also did not play their game tonight. They played Duke's game and shot threes like they were going out of style. On the other hand, Tyler Zeller hit 6 out of 9 shots he took and had 18 points. He and Henson need to get the ball more instead of jacking up threes.
Zeller was the leading scorer, but Barnes ended up with 17 points which included two monster dunks. Marshall ended up with another good game with 8 assists to only 2 turnovers. John Henson had another double-double with 14 points and 13 rebounds. He also had 5 blocks. You can argue he affects the game more than any other player in the game.
Wake's leading scorer was J.T. Terrell with 18 points. Their only other double-digit scorer was Gary Clark with 13 points.
It was not their most impressive win so far, but the Heels did improve to 19-6 overall and 9-2 in the conference. Their next game is against Boston College on Saturday.