UNC struggles to defend against Pittsburgh in loss

GREENSBORO — It was like looking in a mirror.

With suffocating defense, opportunistic rebounding and just the right scoring touch, Pittsburgh jumped out to a daunting 25-8 lead against North Carolina in Friday’s ACC tournament quarterfinals bout.

Marcus Paige has seen that act before.

The UNC sophomore guard has been on the other end of it. He remembers — when No. 4-seed UNC (23-9) was playing right — soaring to a quick 12-0 lead against Maryland on Feb. 4 and shutting down the Terrapins before they even had a chance.

That was win No. 4 in UNC’s 12-game winning streak. The times have changed.

In the last couple of weeks, opposing teams have poked holes in UNC’s defensive armor, and that continued Friday as the Panthers sent a defeated North Carolina back to Chapel Hill in an 80-75 loss.

“I think in the wins we had, we really set the tone defensively,” Paige said. “We were really active, We were all over the place on the defensive end.

“That hasn’t happened recently.”

It didn’t happen again Friday — at least not until the final eight minutes, when the Tar Heels bottled up the Panthers in their press defense.

But by then, it was too late.

It was a defensive struggle for UNC for 32 minutes, particularly in the post.

Pittsburgh scored eight of its first 11 attempts in the paint. On the boards, 6-foot-9 center Talib Zanna was a rebounding vacuum, at one point out-rebounding the entire UNC team 17-16.

Zanna finished with a career-high 21 boards — 10 offensive, 11 defensive — and added 19 points before fouling out with a minute and three seconds left to play.

“I think part of that is on us, just not doing a good job checking off each and every time they got a shot up,” said junior forward James Michael McAdoo. “I think he did a good job of going to the front of the rim. A lot of the balls just dropped right in front of his hands.”

UNC as a whole was out-rebounded 43-35, narrowing the gap slightly in its last-minute bid for the lead. It was a similar story for the Tar Heels at Duke last Saturday, where the Tar Heels’ 20 rebounds were their fewest in a game since March 8, 1987.

Coach Roy Williams cycled through a few different defensive looks, including a 3-2 zone and various presses, before settling on a full-court press that produced seven Pittsburgh turnovers in the game’s last seven minutes.

As effective as it was, UNC can’t run the press for an entire game. It’s too taxing, Williams said.

With the NCAA tournament approaching, UNC will need to recapture its defensive intensity — to set the tone early.

“We can’t let people keep hitting us,” said sophomore forward Brice Johnson. “We gotta hit back. This is a fight.”

And in some ways Friday, it was like the Tar Heels were fighting themselves.

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