UNC basketball wins a big game over Michigan in Charlotte

It has taken a while, but the 2022-23 North Carolina men’s basketball team is beginning to look like what it was always supposed to look like.

Playing against Michigan on Wednesday night in the inaugural Jumpman Invitational in Charlotte, UNC won an entertaining game, 80-76, by relying on its stars to be stars. Although the site was officially neutral, this was very much a home game for the Tar Heels, who were cheered for by at least 90% of a fired-up crowd of 19,236 that wore Carolina blue and filled nearly every seat in the Spectrum Center.

“It felt like an NCAA tournament game,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said.

It was the Tar Heels’ fourth straight win after their surprising early struggles, which included a four-game losing skid. And it came at a nice time. It wouldn’t have been ideal had the Tar Heels men’s team lost a game in the first year of a new holiday tournament that owed its existence to the fame and global reach of Michael Jordan, UNC’s most well-known basketball player and shoe salesman.

UNC (9-4) is still unranked in The AP Top 25 after beginning the season at No. 1. But the Tar Heels are starting to find their way, primarily by understanding that leaving big man Armando Bacot out of the offense never does anyone any good.

Said Davis of Bacot: “We have to feed him the ball. It has to go inside-out. … Our first, second and third option is to throw the ball down to him.”

Bacot had 26 points and five rebounds against Michigan, shooting 11-for-15 from the floor. Bacot fooled the 7-1, 260-pound Hunter Dickinson inside with a dazzling repertoire of low-post moves, even though Michigan’s Dickinson was two inches taller and 25 pounds heavier.

Michigan (7-4) kept it close all the way. But UNC also got two huge defensive plays late from Concord’s Leaky Black, as well as 19 points from R.J. Davis and 18 from Caleb Love.

In other words, the players who led UNC to the NCAA tournament final last year emerged, outplaying Michigan by just enough late in what Bacot called a “chippy” game. He sustained a bloody lip, and after one scrum a rare quadruple technical was called (two players on each team were T’ed up).

The game was the marquee matchup in the newly minted, two-day Jumpman Invitational at the Spectrum Center. One of the coolest parts: It was a joint men’s and women’s tournament, as the original four schools that partnered with Jordan Brand in both basketball and football — UNC, Michigan, Florida and Oklahoma — brought both squads to Charlotte. UNC’s women had lost to Michigan on Tuesday night, but the Tar Heel men got revenge Wednesday.

Although this was the 192nd time UNC’s men’s team has played in Charlotte — they’ve now won 165 of those, or 85.9% — it was the first time the team had played in the Queen City in three years.

The last time UNC played in Charlotte had been particularly notable. It came in the ACC tournament semifinals in March 2019 and featured Zion Williamson (31 points, 11 rebounds) leading Duke to a 74-73 nail-biter of a win over UNC. Both teams were ranked in The AP top 5 at the time. It was one of the best college games I’ve ever seen in person.

This one didn’t have the same stakes, and it mattered nowhere near as much as the two teams’ most significant game ever — the Tar Heels’ “Chris Webber timeout” win over Michigan in the 1993 national championship.

Oddly, that 1993 game ended up with UNC winning, 77-71, and this one had the exact same score with 36 seconds left.

At this first Jumpman, the crowd was loud, the games were mostly competitive and the new black-and-white floor color scheme was striking.

“I loved this event,” Michigan coach Juwan Howard said. Davis said several times it felt like “a home game” and that “the fan support was “fantastic.”

The same four teams are scheduled to come to Charlotte each of the next two Decembers as well, although the matchups will be flipped.

Former UNC coach Roy Williams was part of the pro-UNC crowd, sitting about 10 feet away from the Tar Heel bench with his wife, Wanda. Ol’ Roy got up and shook his fist in excitement after Love converted a massive dunk off an open-court steal.

It was a fine moment on a fine night, as the Jumpman Invitational made a successful debut and the Tar Heels made a successful return to form.