RAPID REACTION | Missed shots, missed chances: UNC holds off Louisville, 77-74

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – In a game destined to be a shootout, Louisville came into Chapel Hill with a howitzer, but discovered that sometimes it jams.

For a minute and a half before halftime and the opening five-plus minutes afterward, the Cardinals fired 15 straight blanks. They missed everything. The kind of misses that make the rim look like it has diplomatic immunity.

While No. 24 Louisville was auditioning for a role as “The Team That Couldn’t Buy One,” North Carolina, ranked No. 18, was quietly doing arithmetic, outscoring Louisville 21-2, and suddenly a close game had the feel of a foreclosure notice.

By the time the smoke cleared, the Tar Heels owned a 16-point lead, a comfortable chair, and most of the oxygen in the building.

The final score said 77–74, which is basketball’s polite way of lying. This game was decided when North Carolina treated the paint like beachfront property and Louisville treated it like quicksand.

The Heels outscored the Cardinals 40–24 inside and shot 54 percent for the night, including a first half in which they hit 61 percent and made layups the way most people make toast, despite playing without their top player, Caleb Wilson.

Louisville, meanwhile, hit 14 three-pointers — enough long-distance success to win most games — but went just 10-for-20 on layups, which is like acing calculus but failing arithmetic. And the Cards again failed to fully take advantage of mid-range opportunities, driving into North Carolina's rim protection and missing close-in.

With the loss, the Cardinals dropped to 4-11 against ranked teams under Pat Kelsey.

Seth Trimble played the role of professional tormentor, scoring 30 points on 11-of-16 shooting.

Mikel Brown Jr. answered with 24, Ryan Conwell added 23, and together they accounted for most of Louisville’s second-half resistance, a late rally that made the Tar Heels glance nervously at the exits. But rallies are like apologies: timing matters.

Down three in the final seconds, Brown drove for a layup, absorbed contact, and watched the ball refuse cooperation. No whistle, no miracle, just gravity doing its job and North Carolina doing the rest.

This is becoming a theme. Louisville fell to 0-8 this season when trailing with five minutes left and 0-15 under Kelsey in those situations, further proof that hope is not a strategy, especially on the road.

The Cardinals are now 20-8 overall, 9-6 in the ACC, and a little less comfortable in the NCAA Tournament seeding neighborhood they occupied before tipoff, where most projections had them at a No. 6 seed. North Carolina, meanwhile, improved to 22-6 and looked very much like a team that knows exactly where the rim lives.

Louisville will say it was close, and technically, mathematically, cosmetically, it was.

But games like this are not lost at the buzzer. This game hinged on which high-powered offensive team would put together the strongest defensive stretch. That team was wearing powder blue.

This one was lost in that painful stretch when the ball stopped going in, UNC started believing, and the night tilted just enough that everything started rolling downhill.

And in Chapel Hill, downhill leads to the basket.