The #16 UNC Tar Heels got double-doubles from both starting frontcourt members once again and found some shooting touch from three-point range, as they pulled away from the Georgetown Hoyas with a final
score of 81-61. Caleb Wilson led the charge with 20 points, while Derek Dixon recorded a new career-high 14 after his late heroics against Kentucky.
The game started at a breakneck pace, with the teams scoring a combined 19 in the first four minutes. Caleb Wilson and Kyan Evans each both had multiple buckets in the first four minutes, while K.J. Lewis had 9 early points for the Hoyas. Georgetown made the first big run of the game, hitting a couple of transition threes to take an early 14-9 lead, but after the first substitution, Derek Dixon picked up right where he left off for the Heels, scoring 5 quick points to give his team a brief lead. After some time trading buckets, the Heels went on their first big run, an 11-4 spurt that gave them a five-point lead. The Hoyas played pretty well to stop their deficit from growing deeper, but for every basket they made down the stretch, Henri Veesaar had an answer that stopped them from putting together a run. The big man had 7 of his first-half in a 7-2 personal run late in the first half, to go with 7 boards. The rest of the scoring effort for the Heels was fairly balanced: Wilson had 10, Dixon had 8, Evans had 7, and Luka Bogavac had 5.
As has been their habit in their best games this year, the Tar Heels came out hot to start the second half. They opened up the second frame with an 18-8 run, started by 6 quick points from Wilson and punctuated by back-to-back-to-back three-pointers from Dixon, Veesaar, and Jarin Stevenson. To their credit, Georgetown pulled things back under relative control after an Ed Cooley timeout, scoring 7 straight of their own before a big Jonathan Powell three-ball disrupted them. The three-point barrage was too much for the Hoyas — the Heels hit 5 of their first 6 attempts from outside in the 2nd half, and even after that run from Georgetown, that helped them build an 18-point lead with 10 minutes to go that seemed just about insurmountable.
From there, Caleb Wilson took over again on offense, hitting jumper after jumper in the midrange to keep the Hoyas at bay. That, combined with continued high team effort on defense and some shooting regression on Georgetown’s behalf, made the game feel over well before the final horn sounded with UNC holding its largest lead of the game.
Wilson added 14 rebounds to his 20-point game, one fewer than backcourt partner Henri Veesaar’s 15. Veesaar also had 18 for the game to go with 3 assists and 3 blocks; the Heels as a whole finished with a 45-36 advantage on the boards.
The Heels will continue this homestand on Saturday against USC Upstate.
