North Carolina rally falls short in ACC Tournament loss to Clemson :: WRAL.com

CHARLOTTE — For three days, North Carolina coach Hubert Davis stressed the importance of playing with a certain fire as the season entered its lose-and-go-home phase.

“Having that hunger and that thirst,” Davis said. “That hunger and thirst to compete, that hunger and thirst to prepare, to practice. Hunger and thirst to play together as a team and as a group as long as we can. We have talked about that at great length.”

But for much of their 80-79 loss to Clemson in Thursday’s ACC Tournament quarterfinals, the Tar Heels failed to play with the urgency that Davis demanded and preached. The fourth-seeded Tar Heels trailed by 18 in the second half, leading some UNC partisans to head to the Spectrum Center exits early.

North Carolina mounted a comeback, pulling to within 1 in the final seconds, behind Henri Veesaar, who set career-highs with 28 points and 17 rebounds. 

But the final minutes couldn’t erase the memory of UNC getting pushed around for much of the game by the fifth-seeded Tigers.

“Just the inability to respond to physicality,” Davis said. “I felt like it was the same thing Saturday of last week [in a loss to Duke], and for most of the game tonight. … I felt like their physicality took us out of our offense, took us off of our cuts, our screens, our moves and [we] didn’t really respond to that until the latter part of the second half.”

Nick Davison led Clemson with 17 points and 11 rebounds. He made all four of his 3-point attempts. Clemson’s bench outscored UNC 29-5, and the Tigers shot 49.1% from the field. 

And Clemson was without center Carter Welling, who suffered a torn ACL in Wednesday’s second-round game against Wake Forest.

The Tigers scored the final six points of the first half to take a 39-31 halftime edge and then extended that to 18 with 11:36 remaining in the second. UNC wouldn’t get it to under 10 points until 2:28 remaining.

The Tar Heels made five consecutive shots down the stretch before Jarin Stevenson’s last-second heave fell short.

“We played desperate, but we play good when we’re desperate,” Veesaar said. “I think we’re going to keep that mindset when we go into the next games and into March.”

They are desperate. North Carolina (24-8) will enter the NCAA Tournament with losses in its last two games.

It was just more than a week ago when it appeared freshman star Caleb Wilson was on his way back from his left hand injury. The Tar Heels had weathered the storm without the All-ACC first-team selection.

Then Wilson broke his thumb on his right hand on a dunk in practice, UNC lost to Duke to end the regular season and then fell in their first game in the ACC Tournament.

Now the Tar Heels have a few days to find that “hunger and thirst” Davis was so desperately seeking out of his team — or else this group won’t be together for much longer at all.