UNC vs. Pitt - Player of the Game: Garrison Brooks

What we can say about UNC’s loss to Pitt was that it came in a different fashion than the last one. Where as against Georgia Tech, the Tar Heels came out of the gate sleeping and got too far behind to ever mount any sort of legit comeback.

Against the Panthers, Carolina played pretty well in the first half, but then fell apart in the second and gave up another one of their trademark runs. See? It’s different.

One thing that was the same in both games was that Garrison Brooks was one of very few shining lights in an otherwise very bad loss.

Brooks gets our Player of the Game award for UNC’s 73-65 loss to Pitt after finishing as the Tar Heels’ leading scorer. He finished with a double-double, going for 21 points on 9-12 shooting (including one three weirdly) and 10 rebounds.

However, because seemingly nothing with this year’s team can be purely good, we do have to talk about the big negative from his performance. He went just 2-5 from the free throw line with all three coming late in the game. Yes, if he makes those three, that directly wouldn’t have flipped the result of the game. However, they also all came at a point when UNC seemed to be mounting some sort of comeback. He makes them, it forces Pitt to inbound the ball and allowed the Tar Heels to set up on defense, maybe some possessions go differently, who knows.

The only one player worthy of consideration was Armando Bacot. After struggling for a couple weeks now, the freshman bounced back with his first good game in a while. He finished with 15 points and nine rebounds.

So, yeah, that’s about it for good things to talk about from that loss.