Tar Heels’ toughness questioned again after loss against Iowa

For the second time in eight days, a defeat left North Carolina coach Roy Williams questioning his team’s toughness and calling for more of it, and left his players wondering what they’re missing and how to find it.

The first time was a week ago in the Bahamas, where the Tar Heels endured an ugly loss against Butler. And then came Wednesday night at the Smith Center, where UNC in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge endured a 60-55 defeat against Iowa that was, perhaps, even uglier than the Butler loss.

At least in the Butler game, the outcome seemed likely for most of the second half. In this one, the Tar Heels held leads throughout the second half – leads of five points with 10 minutes to play, of four points with 8 1/2 minutes to play, of three with about six minutes to play.

With two minutes left, the Tar Heels led 55-54, but by then they had scored their final points and had yet to realize it. The final minutes played out like what came before: poor offensive execution and an inability, when it mattered, to come up with a defensive stop.

“They wanted it more than we did and that’s a sorry thing to say,” Williams said. “It’s a sad thing to say. But you can’t give up 12 points on offensive rebounds, 16 offensive rebounds in the second half. And, again, we still had opportunities and we missed some opportunities.

“Even at the end, we’re trying to get the two guys to screen for Marcus (Paige), and both of them start, stop, start, stop. It was almost like a comedy. Except it wasn’t very funny to me.”

Paige, the junior guard, suffered through a miserable shooting night, though he had no shortage of company there. He made just four of his 16 attempts – the final one a 3-pointer that would have tied the game with five seconds to play but instead bounced harmlessly off the rim.

He struggled with his shot, as he sometimes has in the early season, and no one was there to help pick up the slack. The Tar Heels made 27.9 percent of their shots from the field – a season-low – and they missed in a variety of ways: from the perimeter, on the inside.

At one point with about 4 1/2 minutes to play, Brice Johnson, UNC’s junior forward, missed once from about six inches. And then he did it again. That sequence left Williams angry, he said, and it left Johnson sounding sullen afterward.

“Really frustrating,” he said. “Wish I could have made it but it’s all right. Next time I’ll know to dunk it. Just stop being a baby. Just go up there and dunk it like I used to.”

The No. 12 Tar Heels (5-2) missed eight of their final nine attempts from the field. Meanwhile, Iowa (6-2), which wasn’t a portrait of offensive efficiency, either, did enough.

The Hawkeyes took the lead for good with one minute, 16 seconds to play on a three-point play – a layup and a foul shot – from Mike Gesell, a junior guard who played alongside Paige on their high school AAU team. Gesell led the Hawkeyes with 16 points and 7-foot-1 center Adam Woodbury, who also played on Paige’s AAU team, finished with 11 points and seven rebounds.

Paige, an Iowa native who grew up about 30 minutes from Iowa’s campus, knew a lot of guys he played against on Wednesday night. Between this loss and the one against Iowa State that ended UNC’s season last March in the NCAA tournament, his home state has been unkind to him.

That was the least of his worries afterward, though.

“It’s not any harder than losing any other game at home,” he said. “We had a goal of going undefeated at home. It doesn’t matter who comes in our gym. We just didn’t play well enough today.”

Paige agreed with Williams that UNC lacked toughness. For the second time in a week, the Tar Heels were involved in a game more dictated by will and grit than by finesse.

Butler pushed around UNC a week ago in the Bahamas, leading everyone from Williams to analysts on ESPN to describe the Tar Heels as “soft.” That’s a label, still, that UNC will have to shed.

“It’s a gut check right now,” said Justin Jackson, the UNC freshman forward who finished with seven points on Wednesday. “We have to look inside ourselves and figure out whether we want to be a good team or not.”

In some aspects Williams uses to measure toughness and want-to, the Tar Heels started well enough on Wednesday night, and by halftime had 15 offensive rebounds to Iowa’s one. It was different after halftime, though, and the Hawkeyes rebounded 16 of their misses in the second half.

That’s part of the toughness problem Williams and his players talked about. But how to fix it?

“That’s a good question,” said Paige, who finished with 13 points. “I don’t know.”

This story was originally published December 3, 2014 at 9:47 PM.