CAROLINA 87, ARKANSAS 72
NOVEMBER 24, 2023
BATTLE 4 ATLANTIS THIRD PLACE GAME
IMPERIAL ARENA, ATLANTIS, PARADISE ISLAND, BAHAMAS

UNC Scoring Leader: RJ Davis 30
UNC Rebound Leader: Harrison Ingram 10
UNC Assist Leader: Ingram 6
Team Records: UNC 5-1, Arkansas 4-3

• RJ Davis scored 21 second-half points and tied his career high with 30. He also scored 30 against Baylor in the second round of the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
• Davis led UNC in scoring for the second straight game, third time this season and 22nd time in his career.
• Davis was the first Tar Heel to score 20 or more in a second half since Caleb Love had 22 at Wake Forest last season.
• Davis led the Tar Heels with 66 points in the Battle 4 Atlantis.
• Davis was 9 for 18 from the floor. He tied his career best with nine field goals (fifth time).

• Seth Trimble scored a career-high 12 points. His previous was 11 twice, including against UC Riverside on November 17.
• Trimble made a career-high two three-pointers. He came into the game with two career threes.
• Harrison Ingram had his second double-double in three games and the seventh of his career. He is the only Tar Heel to score in double figures in all six games this season. He totaled 49 points in the three games in the Bahamas.
• Ingram had a game-high six assists, his first game as a Tar Heel and 22nd overall with five or more assists.
• Cormac Ryan did not play due to a sprained right ankle. He had started the first five games and is averaging 10.8 points per game.

• Freshman Elliot Cadeau made his first collegiate start. He had seven points and three assists vs. the Razorbacks and 11 assists and one turnover in the three games in the Bahamas.
• Carolina trailed at halftime in its two wins in the Bahamas (and lost the one game it led at the break). Arkansas led, 38-35, but the Tar Heels out-scored the Razorbacks by 18 in the second half (52-34).
• UNC scored 56 second-half points in erasing a six-point deficit to Northern Iowa two days ago.
• Carolina committed only three turnovers and shot 58.6% from the floor in the second half. It was the highest field goal percentage in a half by the Tar Heels this season (previous 55.2% in the first half in the season opener vs. Radford).

• Armando Bacot had one offensive rebound, the 500th of his career. He is the only Tar Heel ever with 500 offensive rebounds.
• Bacot had nine points vs. the Razorbacks. He scored eight vs. Villanova, the first time his sophomore season he had consecutive games with fewer than 10 points (Marquette and Florida State).
• Carolina improves to 6-3 in three appearances in the Battle 4 Atlantis. UNC went 2-1 in 2014, 2-1 in 2019 and 2-1 in 2023.
• Tramon Mark scored 34 of Arkansas’s 72 points. It was the second consecutive game an opponent scored 34 points (Eric Dixon, Villanova).
• UNC was called for 72 fouls in the last three games, the most fouls UNC has committed over three games since committing 72 against Pittsburgh, Providence and Iowa State to end the 2013-14 season.
• Carolina has scored 80 or more points in five of its first six games this season and the first time since the 2018-19 season.
• The Tar Heels are 31-4 in three seasons under Hubert Davis when it scores 80 or more points.

UNC-Arkansas
• Carolina leads, 8-3.
• None of the 11 games have been played on either team’s campus. This was the 10th different state or country in which the teams have played one another.
• Davis’s 30 points were the most ever by a Tar Heel in 11 games against Arkansas (Luke Maye had 28 in 2017).
• Mark’s 34 were the most ever by Arkansas vs. UNC.

Next Game: Wednesday, November 29 vs. Tennessee, ACC-SEC Challenge, Chapel Hill, 7:15 p.m., ESPN

We pretty much know that Davis, Bacot and Ingram will average double digits in points in every game this season and Cadeau probably will also by the first of the year but a additional proven shooter and scorer will make all of the difference in the world…

Last season with neither Nance, Black or Johnson being able to score from the wings on a regular basis Bacot was often double and triple teamed because opponents could but now that both Ryan and Ingram already proving they can hit corner and wing shots Bacot will not have to fight so much to get open in the paint.

If Ryan can deliver 10 points a contest I truly believe Carolina can put five players on the court that can score in double digits. And there will be games where WIthers and Washington will get into double digits…

Ryan being a upperclassman will definitely with the surrounding pieces to help have a great opportunity to lead by example…

Just our luck. We need to win some OOC games for NCAA NET purposes, because the ACC is once again terrible. And we lose a key starter on a dumb free throw play, in a game we should have won if not for bad refs and Hubert's inability to change defenses.

It's Day 3 at the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament and the Tar Heels will face Arkansas for 3rd place. Trey and Mark will be courtside for THI again. Post any game thoughts here!

How does he still have a job at Arkansas…Good OL coach but can’t run a program..

Two top 20 teams fresh from losing close contests battle to finish 3rd in the tournament. Biggest questions for me will be if Ryan is held out will his spot be taken by Wojcik or Withers. Personally my choice would be Wojcik but I am not the coach. Bacot is in a funk and as a senior leader and he needs to lead by example. As some of announcers have said he needs to demand the ball and work the paint like Ingram has been doing.

Cadeau also needs to step up both offensively and defensively…If the opponents are daring him to take the outside shot like they did Black last season he needs to prove them wrong. There is no easy way to say this but his defense needs lots of work…

For the second straight game I am going to miss most of it because my wife and I are going to see Napoleon but I will dvd it. Hopefully Carolina will recover from all of the fouls called on them yesterday and play like champions and don’t have a Waterloo of their own..

UNC Coach Hubert Davis said in postgame he had no update on Cormac Ryan, who left the game late in overtime with what appeared to be an injured right ankle. He was in a great deal of pain. Davis did say Ryan was “walking around in the locker room” after the game.

For those who are new around here, since 1996 I've compiled the team stats for every game (996 and counting), which allows us to compare the performance of a game against the program's standard. Each stat is explained once you click the "spoiler" button. Points per possession, loss of ball, and total possession numbers are based on Dean Smith's definition of a possession, which leads to very different (and more accurate) numbers than those published by Ken Pomeroy and the like.


Discussion
UNC was able to score 0.92 points per possession, which is just short of Dean Smith's goal, but they allowed 0.98 from Villanova. Villanova shot 23% from 3 and 47% from 2, an excellent defensive showing for UNC. UNC had 3 more possessions, so they outrebounded Villanova. The problems were the startlingly low number of turnovers forced, and the enormous number of free throws attempted by Villanova. In other words UNC's big men did a horrible job defending without fouling, and the guards, as we have seen the last 3 years, did a horrible job of forcing turnovers. It's early, but this game almost exactly matches the profile of the typical game we've seen from Hubert's group since Day 1.