Davis and Bacot Lead Top-Seeded North Carolina To ACC Championship Game With Win Over Pitt

Raza Umerani

Staff Writer

March 15, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Behind inspired performances from RJ Davis and Armando Bacot, No. 1 seed North Carolina pulled away from No. 4 seed Pitt in the second half, winning 72-65 in the first ACC Tournament semifinal inside Capital One Arena on Friday night.

The Tar Heels’ (27-6) star duo shined down the stretch with Davis scoring a game-high 25 points while Bacot poured in 19 to go along with 11 rebounds and a pair of blocks. In the second half, the pair combined for 31 of the team’s 39 points, including UNC’s last 18.

“Just super excited to get a chance to play in the championship,” Bacot said postgame. “It was a tough game, and it got close down in the stretch, and I think me and RJ really wanted to make plays so we could win the game.” 

The brilliance of those two made up for the shortcomings of UNC’s other usual studs; Cormac Ryan shot just 1-of-9 with three points, Elliot Cadeau only hit two of his nine shots, all while Harrison Ingram was rather quiet by his standards, registering six points and six rebounds.

Meanwhile, the Panthers (22-10) couldn’t get their shots to fall, especially from their stars. ACC first-teamer Blake Hinson and ACC Sixth Man of the Year Ishmael Leggett — who scored 30 on Thursday — combined to shoot just 2-of-19 from the floor and 1-of-8 from beyond the arc. The tandem scored just 11 points, all of which came with under 10 minutes remaining in the game. As a team, Pitt shot a drab 38.5 percent from the field.

“For us, it's team defense,” Ingram said. “We're the number one defense in the ACC. We have a lot of good players. We play kind of smaller so our guards get into the ball pretty well. For me, it was easier to stay on Blake Hinson knowing that our guards are doing their job on the ball. Armando is doing his job on the ball screens, making it difficult for everybody else.”

One of the key reasons Carolina was able to get going down low was the incessant fouling from Pitt’s big men. Federiko Federiko and Guillermo Diaz Graham combined for seven fouls with the more physical Federiko picking up three in the first half. Subsequently, Bacot was able to dominate the much easier matchup against Diaz Graham, leading to a 34-20 advantage in paint points for UNC while that duo combined for just 10 points.

“Pitt has always been a physical team, and going into this game we knew we had to set the tone in the trenches,” Bacot said. “That's one of the main things me and [Ingram] talked about going into this game. We wanted to rebound the ball, specifically on the offensive end, and try to create second-chance opportunities, but also get their big men in foul trouble. We knew if we could get Federiko in foul trouble, and also Diaz, that we would have an advantage. I think we did a great job of that, and I think that allowed us to have a lot of success.”

Despite the troubles defending in the paint and shooting struggles from its stars, Pitt still led for 16 minutes and 34 seconds in the ballgame, getting up by as much as nine early in the first half. That was in large part thanks to the excellence of Carlton Carrington, who had a team-high 24 points on 9-of-17 shooting, four of which were threes. And like Thursday, Jaland Lowe facilitated the offense brilliantly, scoring 17 points with four rebounds and four assists. 

But an 8-0 run early in the second half brought the Tar Heels’ lead to six, and although the Panthers came back to tie the game at 62, they were outscored 10-3 in the final minutes of the ballgame, highlighted by a dagger triple from Davis, sealing their loss.

“RJ has been our closer,” Bacot said. “In moments like that, it's a huge luxury to know you can put the ball in our guards' hands and he'll either make the shot or make the right play. I think it just shows all the hard work he's put in to be able to make a huge shot like that when we need him most on the biggest stage.”

Now, Pitt’s attention turns to Selection Sunday. Thursday’s win over fellow bubble team Wake Forest may have been enough to sneak them into the NCAA Tournament, but other developments on the bubble — such as Texas A&M’s win over Kentucky and Providence’s victory against Creighton — make the picture much less clear. 

“I'm not a bracketologist,” Pitt head coach Jeff Capel said. “I'm not an expert. I'm a basketball coach. I try to worry about my team. I know we've gotten better. … Since January 20th, I think we've played as well as anyone in college basketball.”

While the Panthers’ resume is seemingly that of a team deserving to be in the field of 68, a spot in the Big Dance is certainly not a guarantee.

“That just doesn't make sense at all,” UNC head coach Hubert Davis said about Pitt’s potential exclusion from the tournament. “I don't care what metric you look at. There's no way that you can look at this game and look at Pitt and not say it's definitively an NCAA Tournament team. And not just an NCAA Tournament team, [but] a team that could go far in the tournament.”

The Tar Heels will take on the winner of the second semifinal between No. 3 seed Virginia and No. 10 seed NC State in the ACC Tournament Championship Game on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN. A win would give them their first tournament title since 2016 — the last time the event was held in the nation’s capital — and in all likelihood, a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

“It would be huge because we've been through so much and we just worked so hard this year,” RJ Davis said. “We've all been locked in and we've been a family, and it's just been a fun ride. To go out with a championship would be huge, and that's been one of our biggest goals this year.”