Armando Bacot scored 26 points and North Carolina held off Michigan in a feisty game for an 80-76 victory Wednesday night in Charlotte, N.C., as part of the Jumpman Invitational.
R.J. Davis had 19 points and Caleb Love poured in 18 points as the Tar Heels won their fourth in a row following a four-game skid.
Kobe Bufkin racked up 22 points and Jeff Howard tallied 17 for Michigan (7-4), which couldn’t overcome a halftime hole despite several rallies. Former Duke player Joey Baker had nine points off the bench and Hunter Dickinson also posted nine points for the Wolverines, who shot 41.9 percent from the field.
Love went 4 for 4 on free throws in the last 40 seconds to help seal the outcome. Bacot shot 11 for 15 from the field to lead North Carolina’s 50 percent shooting from the field and Leaky Black provided nine points and 11 rebounds.
Pete Nance, who was one of the heroes in last weekend’s victory over Ohio State, didn’t score until his three-point play with less than six minutes remaining stretched the Tar Heels’ lead to 69-60.
Michigan was in an offensive dry spell, scoring only three points in a six-minute stretch. From there, the Wolverines posted six straight points in 79 seconds to trim the deficit to three.
It might have been closer, but a Michigan turnover ended up with Bacot scoring.
The game became chippy and confrontational in the first half and North Carolina seemed to benefit coming out of the stretch. At the 6:53 mark, two players from each team were tagged with technical fouls.
That development had the overwhelmingly pro-North Carolina crowd fully engaged.
North Carolina used an 18-6 stretch to end the first half to hold a 41-34 edge. In the final five and a half minutes of the half, Davis bagged two 3s, Love hit a 3 and Bacot converted a three-point play for some key possessions.
The Tar Heels made six of 12 shots from 3-point range in the opening half.
North Carolina defeated a Big Ten Conference opponent on a neutral court for the second time in five days after rallying in the second half and topping then-No. 23 Ohio State in overtime Saturday in New York.
–Field Level Media
