With only a minute to go, the Syracuse students began pouring out of the stands and onto the wide pathways that surround this basketball court floating on a football pitch, forming a heaving, impatient mass. They had to wait a long minute, a full ten minutes in real time, before they could sprint onto the court and celebrate the Orange’s season-high victory on Tuesday night.
Hubert Davis’ final instruction to his team was to skip the handshakes and flee to the locker room, beckoning his players towards him as time expired on an 86-79 loss, North Carolina’s third in five games after starting the season 9-0 in the ACC. . The celebration that raged behind them was a very loud reminder that North Carolina, thanks to the spot it staked out in the first half of the conference season, will get everyone’s best shot the rest of the way — even if, to some extent, UNC already gets everyone’s best shot simply by being UNC. But it’s difficult to imagine anyone having a better chance than this. Syracuse simply couldn’t miss. J.J. Starling’s 40-foot heave off the glass, when he thought the shot clock was running out, pretty much summed up the night. That was erased J.J. Starling’s 40-foot heave off the glass, when he thought the shot clock was running out, pretty much summed up the night.
That erased North Carolina’s final lead of the game with 6:45 remaining and represented the best shooting night by an opponent against the Tar Heels in nine years. The Orange defeated North Carolina for the first time since 2021, shooting 63% from the field.
