And by nearly identical scores too.
In Sunday’s ACC Action, SMU took care of Longwood, 98-82 and UNC handled Campbell by a nearly identical score, 97-81.
Let’s start with the first question: where the hell, who the hell, is Longwood?
Well turns out it’s in Farmville, Virginia and they compete in the Big South. Previously, they did well in D-III, with multiple tournament appearances, including a bid last year (they lost to Houston).
Longwood made a game of it though. It was 45-43 at the half and it took the Mustangs about 10:00 into the second half to get some meaningful separation.
But they did and pulled away for their seventh straight win.
Former Demon Deacon Boopie Miller had 24 to pace the ‘Stangs. Yohan Traore and Matt Cross added 20 and 19 respectively.
This was SMU’s seventh straight win and moved the new ACC member to 11-2 on the season, which is not bad.
Duke sees SMU this weekend, incidentally, and in Dallas. Should be fun.
Meanwhile, UNC had a bit of a slow start again, but not so much that it was a real problem. The Tar Heels put together a late first-half run to go up 40-29 at the half.
This is more impressive considering that UNC played without Seth Trimble, who is out with an unspecified upper body injury.
No matter. Ian Jackson is probably going to be better and indeed he led UNC with 26 points, hitting 9-16/3-8.
RJ Davis managed 23 points and broke UNC’s three point shooting career mark set by Marcus Paige with 299.
Jalen Washington moved back into the starting lineup and managed 10 points and five boards against the Camels.
Cade Tyson, who has certainly been up and down, was down again with three points in 18 minutes, shooting 1-5/0-4.
With the win, the Tar Heels move to 8-5.
We thought emotion might give Campbell a better shot than it would have otherwise, but in the end, it didn’t really matter. UNC was just too much.
Good thing, too.
Hubert Davis, who is immensely likable, has taken a certain amount of heat this season. An 8-5 records is not what UNC fans want, but it sure beats 7-6 with a loss to the Campbell Camels.
We haven’t seen any update on Trimble’s status, but UNC plays at Louisville on Wednesday and he’d be handy in that one.
There are no games on Monday but on New Year’s Eve, we get NC State at Virginia, Wake Forest visiting Syracuse, Notre Dame taking a weather break in Atlanta with the Yellow Jackets and Virginia Tech visiting Duke.
