Men’s NCAA Tournament: North Carolina Beats Top-Seeded Baylor


The University of North Carolina men’s basketball team spent part of December smashed by Kentucky. January brought humiliations in Miami and Wake Forest. February required embarrassment by Duke and Pittsburgh at home and working overtime to beat a pathetic Syracuse.

Then came March. Tar Heels went to Duke and spoiled Mike Krzyzewski’s last game at Cameron Indoor Stadium On Saturday, March 5, they beat the Eastern region’s #1 seed and reigning national champion Baylor, in overtime in Fort Worth, Texas, to advance to the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament.

Each of these signature victories is on the line that could save any misspelled season. But both? As former North Carolina Coach Roy Williams might say – and sitting in the Fort Worth bleachers, the opportune moment came – “dagum.”

The eighth-seeded Tar Heels are on Friday in Philadelphia at St. Mary’s or UCLA.

It was a late-breaking thriller as they beat Baylor 93-86, the first seed to lose at this year’s tournament on Saturday.

UNC took the lead early and held it without even a draw until 15.8 seconds remained.

But Baylor somehow managed to erase what had seemed like a dominant performance by the Tar Heels up until that point.

In the first half – the 13-led Tar Heels after him – UNC took half of their shots from the field, while Baylor dropped 40 percent and tackled strongly behind the arc. They were in nearly total rebounds while UNC had the smallest sides. Baylor’s turnover, however, sped up Carolina’s rise, making 15 of the Tar Heels’ 42 points before the break.

So did RJ Davis, a sophomore from White Plains, NY, who scored 30 points for UNC.

Davis and his teammates began their promotion after a 9-point defeat to Pittsburgh on February 16 and have since lost only once in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament to Virginia Tech. Krzyzewski was stunned this month when he was knocked out of his team by players like Armando Bacot, a 6-foot-10 youth rebounding with the enthusiasm of an Internal Revenue Service agent, and Brady Manek, a transfer from Oklahoma. Saturday’s game leads North Carolina by three points.

“We knew the potential for this team to come this season and we just wanted to turn that around,” Davis said on Friday. After losing to Pitt, we knew this was not the way we wanted to play. From that moment I think we turned the situation around and started to compete. And everybody embraced their roles and we got used to it.”

Baylor avoided the pile-up disgrace of a long drive home after a miserable loss and the disgrace of being the earliest-leaving champion in tournament history, thanks to a victory over Norfolk State on Thursday, but few things went quite as he had hoped.

Baylor failed to score a basket for close to four minutes in the second half. UNC took the break and scored 13 points and took the lead by 24 points.

Most of this came from Manek, who started to feel small at the end of the second half, when the number 9 in the first half reached 17. He could have probably finished with more than 26 points, but was ejected with just more. 10 minutes to play after being called for a clear foul.

His dismissal proved to be the catalyst for the Baylor attack less than two hours ago, which seemed like a sure-fire route to Philadelphia.

Baylor narrowed the lead with one shot after another, taking one opportunity after another.

Backing 25 points when Manek fouled, the team tied the game at 80 with less than 16 seconds left.

When both teams could not find the basket in the regulation, they forced overtime.

Freshman Dontrez Styles hit an early 3-pointer to allow UNC to regain control. Bacot fired a free throw.

Then Matthew Mayer of Baylor converted two down the line. A layup game by Jeremy Sochan tied the knot again.

Mayer’s final foul sent Bacot back to the line; made both attempts. James Akinjo fired his own free throw for Baylor, bringing the game’s margin back to 1.

Leaky Black’s layup added to North Carolina’s lead. Davis also laid the layup, followed by the free throw he won during his tryout.

They had just 78 seconds to play in overtime and North Carolina were leading by 6 points.

With their share of the Big 12 Conference’s regular season titles, Baylor squandered the chances that could get them closer to saving an afternoon and a season, time ticked and the score didn’t change much.

Instead, North Carolina, a long-forgotten team, would be the schedule to play in March.



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