With just over 10 minutes left in the second half, North Carolina looked like it was on cruise control. Up by 32 points against Syracuse, the Tar Heels had every reason to feel confident - dominant on both ends, executing with purpose, and seemingly in complete command.
Then, in the blink of an eye, everything changed.
Over the final 9:32, Syracuse flipped the script, rattling off a stunning 37-10 run that turned what looked like a blowout into a tense, single-digit game. The Tar Heels still walked away with a 10-point win, but the box score doesn’t come close to capturing the chaos of those final minutes.
This wasn’t just a case of a team easing up with a big lead - it was a full-on unraveling. North Carolina took its foot off the gas, and Syracuse pounced.
The Orange found rhythm, started hitting shots, and cranked up the pressure defensively. The Tar Heels, meanwhile, got sloppy.
They stopped doing the little things that built the lead in the first place - taking smart shots, valuing the basketball, defending without fouling. That attention to detail vanished, and head coach Hubert Davis didn’t mince words afterward.
“Unacceptable,” Davis said when asked about the team’s late-game performance.
He expanded on that with a clear-eyed assessment of what went wrong.
“We always talk about finishing halves, finishing possessions, finishing games, and that’s just unacceptable,” Davis said. “Syracuse is a great basketball team, Coach Autry is a fantastic coach, and you can see they’re extremely talented, but the last nine minutes and thirty-two seconds: just a departure of what allowed us to get the lead.”
It’s a message that speaks to a larger theme for this Tar Heels squad: inconsistency. When they’re locked in, they look like a team that can beat anyone in the country. But when the focus slips - even for a stretch - the mistakes pile up fast.
“We have stretches of brilliance,” Davis said, “and then we’ll go stretches where we’re making multiple mistakes consecutively, and that’s something that we have to work on and get better at.”
That kind of honesty from a head coach isn’t just about holding players accountable - it’s about setting a standard. Davis knows his team has the talent. What he’s looking for now is consistency, especially in how they close out games.
To be fair, basketball is a game of runs. Even the best teams aren’t immune to lapses. But what separates good teams from great ones is how they respond when things start to go sideways - and how they learn from it moving forward.
In the end, North Carolina got the win. But they also got a wake-up call.
“Mistakes are good when you can recognize it, admit it, learn from it, and grow from it,” Davis said.
The Tar Heels will take this one back to the film room. Because while the scoreboard shows a double-digit win, the tape tells a different story - one that could be crucial for a team with big aspirations come March.