CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – North Carolina put the clamps on the leading scorer in conference play Wednesday night, while extending its winning streak.
The Tar Heels beat California 79-53 in ACC basketball at the Smith Center and earned their fourth straight victory to reach their longest winning streak of the season.
Ian Jackson provided 20 points and seven rebounds, Elliot Cadeau 15 points and Seth Trimble 12 points and six rebounds off the bench for UNC (12-6 overall, 5-1 ACC), which won for the sixth time in the over the last seven. games.
Cal guard Andrej Stojakovic came in averaging 24.2 points per game in the ACC Championship. But the Tar Heels, buoyed by the individual defense of Drake Powell and Seth Trimble, locked it in at six points, a season low. The son of former NBA All-Star Peja Stojakovic finished 3 of 13 from the field here, and didn’t make his second shot from the field until the final 6½ minutes of the game, when Carolina had built a lead by 21 points. .
UNC improved to 7-1 in home games this season. RJ Davis only managed a season-low seven points. But founding ACC member Tar Heels, playing in their 1,077th all-time regular season game in the league, still passed ACC newcomer Golden Bears, playing in their sixth game all-time. time in the league. The schools are separated by more than 2,800 miles, coast to coast.
Mady Sissoko’s 16 points and eight rebounds paced Cal (8-9, 1-5). The Golden Bears fell to 1-5 in road games this season.
Tar Heels sail to intermission with lead
Carolina led 39-29 at halftime, despite a slow start from leading scorer RJ Davis. He missed his first four shots from the field, before making a 3-pointer off a dribble with about 40 seconds left in the first half.
Gift’s 11 points paced the Tar Heels in the first half. He made his first four shots from the field to start, making it look easy at times on a collection of pull-up floaters around the paint and weaving drives toward the cup. Ian Jackson scored seven points in the first half, while Jalen Washington and Seth Trimble had six each in the first half.
Washington faced the middle of the post and made a jumper, and on the next trip, Cadeau scored with his left hand on a lay-in to increase UNC’s lead to 36-24. The Tar Heels had connected on 61.5 percent shooting from the field (16 of 26) at this point with 4 1/2 minutes left in the first half.
Meanwhile, the Tar Heels put together a promising defensive effort in the first half against Stojakovic, who came in as the ACC league’s leading scorer this season. While Powell and Trimble mainly took care of this individual mission on defense, Stojakovic missed his first seven shots from the field. He reached the intermission with just two points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field. UNC forward Cade Tyson lost Stojakovic on a backdoor, and he dunk with about 5 1/2 minutes left in the first half.
Next on the program
UNC hosts Stanford on Saturday afternoon (2:15 p.m., CW Network) and finishes its week of back-to-back ACC home games against league newcomers from the West Coast. Stanford lost 80-67 at Wake Forest on Wednesday night and remains looking for its first conference win on the road outside of Cal State. The Cardinal won at Cal in early December, in a game that marked the first ACC basketball championship game for both teams. Stanford (11-6, 3-3) has now suffered ACC road losses at Clemson, Pittsburgh and Wake Forest by double-digit margins.
Stanford is led by first-year coach Kyle Smith, who replaced the fired Jerod Hasse, formerly UNC’s assistant coach for Roy Williams. Carolina leads the all-time series 13-0 against Stanford, and the Tar Heels have beaten the Cardinal all over the map in their previous meetings – in special events such as the 1967 Far West Classic in Portland, Oregon , and the 1977 Rainbow Classic in Honolulu, the 1990 Red Lobster Classic in Orlando, Florida, the 1998 and 2002 Preseason NIT in New York and the 2000 NCAA Tournament in Birmingham, Alabama. UNC last faced Stanford in December 2020 at the Asheville (NC) Civic Center in the Maui Invitational, when that tournament was moved to the mainland.
