CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Georgia Tech had No. 20 North Carolina on the ropes all afternoon Saturday, but the ropes wouldn’t hold, and the Yellow Jackets crumbled down the stretch in a 68-65 loss in front of a crowd of 19,020 at the Dean Smith Center.
Tech (4-5, 0-1 ACC) had a one-point lead with 6:21 to play only to see the Tar Heels take control thanks to a late 7-2 spurt. It was the second consecutive loss for the Jackets, who now are off until facing Northwestern on Dec. 15 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“Minicamp. In-season minicamp,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said about the next phase for his team. “We need to continue to get better. You can get better in-season. Right now, I’m not content. The fellas, they’re starting to taste some things, but we gotta get greedy. We’re trying to find that special sauce. It’s not all the way there yet. But we’re taking baby steps to it. I feel like we’re going in the right direction.”
Tech guard Lance Terry had a game-high 22 points on five 3-pointers and seven free throws. Center Baye Ndongo finished with 19 points and 12 rebounds, and point guard Nait George had 12 points, eight rebounds and three assists. But Tech couldn’t overcome an 8-for-29 shooting mark in the second half or 14 turnovers for the game.
The Jackets did hold the Tar Heels to 39% shooting, forced 18 turnovers and limited star guard RJ Davis to 16 points. The Tar Heels (5-4, 1-0), however, only missed four of their 21 free throws and scored 34 points inside the paint.
Tech fell to 2-15 in its past 17 trips to Chapel Hill, 0-5 this season against teams with winning records and 3-17 when trailing at the half, 3-23 trailing with five minutes left in regulation and 2-16 when scoring less than 70 points during the Stoudamire era.
“Big picture for us, you don’t get any moral victories. We’ve learned how to fight. Now in fighting, you gotta be smart,” Stoudamire said. “And there was a couple plays offensively, and then defensively, I thought we gave up two really big offensive rebounds down the stretch. I thought that hurt us. We gotta become greedy if we’re gonna be a team that’s capable of winning multiple games.
“I’ll say this though: We are coming. I’m proud of our guys because to hold that group of guards down, to play the way they did, to stay together, knowing that Carolina, they were looking at this, they needed this victory themself. We took their best hit. We turned them over 18 times, and we did a heckuva job, so I’m proud of our guys from that standpoint.”
The Jackets got off to a solid start Saturday by making three 3′s in the first eight minutes. North Carolina missed eight of its first nine shots and turned the ball over five times while Tech was building a 14-6 lead.
The Tar Heels went on a 10-2 run after that and tied the score at 16-16 when Seth Trimble stole a pass and went the other way for a right-handed jam, forcing a Tech timeout. The Jackets wound up going 5:19 without scoring as UNC mounted a 26-19 lead on the strength of an Ian Jackson 3.
Tech, however, weathered the storm and hung around long enough to have the penultimate shot of the half, a leaner sunk by George that cut the deficit to 31-30 going into the break. The Jackets were down only one despite shooting 34.3%, turning the ball over eight times and giving up 10 fast-break points.
“We’re right there. Our first two showings of big teams that we’ve played, we came out a little slow, we came out a little, I feel, timid,” Terry said. “These past two games I feel like we’ve come out a lot tougher, a lot more focused. I really do feel like we’re right there. It’s a just a couple little pieces that we have to figure out, and then we’ll be good.”
The Jackets missed their first six shots of the second half and didn’t connect on a jumper until six minutes in, when Terry made a 3. George’s 3 from the left wing that rattled home with 12:29 to play gave Tech a 39-38 lead and another Terry 3 with 9:39 left put the visitors ahead 47-44.
A little more than 4-1/2 minutes later the teams had arrived at a 55-55 tie before Jalen Washington’s two-handed dunk put the Heels ahead 57-55. A Davis layup 30 seconds later put Tech down 59-55 with 4:34 left to play, an amount of time that turned out to be not enough.
“I’m not letting up. I only know one way. I’m gonna stay on ‘em. They’re just gonna be sick of me,” Stoudamire added. “I’m gonna lean on ‘em every single day because it’s hard to win. It’s hard to be a really good player. Each and every day you gotta pay the price. You can’t cheat it. Because when you cheat at the basketball, guys know. So sometimes when things go well for you as a player, you have to look yourself in the mirror. You can’t keep walking past it.”
Trimble scored 19 to lead North Carolina, which broke a three-game losing streak. Tech was without guards Kowacie Reeves (foot), Javian McCollum (head) and Darrion Sutton (hamstring).
