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The first loss of the Michael Malone era at North Carolina is out of the way.
UNC lost 78-70 to Georgia last night in a game in which the Tar Heels had a nine-point lead with 10:35 remaining but could not hold on to beat the Bulldogs.
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Here’s what happened.
Rebounding Issues Persist
This is the storyline Tar Heel fans, coaches, and players are already tired of hearing about four games into the season, but it remains a headline.
Against Georgia Friday night, the Tar Heels recorded a rebound margin of -9. Friday night’s contest marks the third time in four games that the Tar Heels were out-rebounded.* Offensively, they were out-rebounded 16 to 18, and defensively the gap was an even worse 27 to 34.
The Tar Heels consistently lose the battle on the glass, and until Coach Malone can find a solution for the team’s rebounding issues, it is going to be extremely difficult for North Carolina to compete.
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*Wofford is the only team UNC has out-rebounded so far. Fun(?) fact: The Wofford Terriers have yet to out-rebound a Division I school in the 2026-27 season
Three-Point Shooting Abysmal
According to Carolina Basketball Stats & Info, UNC set a school record for three-pointers on Friday night. This is not a good sign.
The Tar Heels were awful from three-point range:
9/38 on three-pointers (28%)
3/12 on corner threes (24%)
The numbers are bad, but they do not fully encapsulate just how visually upsetting some of these shots were. Airballs, shots that barely grazed the side of the rim, top-of-the-backboard deflections, you name it.
In his 2025 book Expensive Basketball, Shea Serrano describes certain moments of basketball as being “expensive”. The core concept is that no advanced sabermetrics stats or numbers alone can capture the beauty and magnitude of a moment like “Block by James!”. The chasedown block that prompted the famous “Block by James!” call would be justifiably more expensive than all the other blocks on a long shopping rack of blocks at the block store based on…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/three-takeaways-unc-loss-georgia-160000140.html
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Publish date : 2026-11-14 16:00:00
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