North Carolina storms past Butler behind hot shooting and a healthy Joel Berry
There’s an old baseball adage that often gets applied to basketball: Sometimes, you just have to tip your cap. That adage was ever so relevant Friday in Memphis.
In the first of two Sweet 16 games at FedEx Forum, fourth-seeded Butler was doing a lot of hat-tipping. That’s because top-seeded North Carolina was doing a lot of shot-making. The Tar Heels stormed to an awfully impressive 92-80 win over the Bulldogs to reach the Elite Eight.
They did so behind red-hot shooting and a comprehensive offensive performance that will allay any fears brought on by a shaky second round. Joel Berry looked uninhibited by the ankle injury that dogged him in the tight win over Arkansas, and North Carolina looked like every bit of the title contender that it was heading into the NCAA tournament.
Butler might not have known it, but its season more or less ended when the Tar Heels jogged out of the tunnel for pregame warmups. The Bulldogs didn’t necessarily disappoint; they just ran into a team that is frighteningly good when it makes jump shots, and ran into that team on a night when it was indeed making jump shots.
Butler likely knew it was in trouble when Berry’s first shot of the game, a 3-pointer, swished through the net. It probably knew it was in deep trouble when nearly everything Justin Jackson threw toward the rim in the opening 13 minutes went in. And it surely realized it was in for a long night when even reserve forward Luke Maye was splashing threes. Maye hit his second triple of the game, and North Carolina’s fifth, with 10:25 remaining in the first half to give the Tar Heels a 30-14 lead.
Butler’s offense wasn’t impotent; Andrew Chrabascz tried to pull the Bulldogs back into the game, and did bring them to within eight toward the end of the first half. But that was the closest Butler would get.
North Carolina simply had too much offense of its own. Berry and Jackson combined for 27 first-half points. Maye hit another 3-pointer late in the half to give him 14 points, already a career high. Even Nate Britt drained a three, and gave North Carolina a 20-point lead. Roy Williams’ team entered halftime up 16, 52-36.
North Carolina went cold from beyond the arc in the second half, and Butler trimmed a 20-point deficit to 11, but Berry stepped up with a massive 3-pointer to put a halt to the Bulldogs’ resurgence.
It was Berry’s third three of the game. The junior point guard finished with a team-leading 26 points. His bounce-back game was almost marred by a scary second-half slip — he skidded when planting his left foot on a drive, and appeared to roll his ankle — but he appeared to be at full-strength down the stretch.
Berry, in an interview with CBS after the game, admitted the fall initially made him nervous. However, “Once I ran it off, it felt better,” he said.
North Carolina finished the game at 1.30 points per possession despite missing 12 free throws and making only one of its last 10 3-pointers. Jackson supplemented Berry’s 26 with 24 points of his own, while Maye finished with 16 and 11 rebounds.
The Tar Heels will play Sunday against the winner of Friday night’s UCLA-Kentucky game with a trip to the Final Four on the line.
More March Madness coverage on Yahoo Sports:
• How Chris Chiozza hit the shot of the NCAA tournament and saved Florida’s season
• These photos of Florida’s buzzer-beater are almost as incredible as the shot itself
• Billion-dollar bust: De’Aaron Fox upstages Lonzo Ball to lead Kentucky past UCLA
• Commercials during March Madness mistakenly thank Republicans for repealing Obamacare
• The Internet loves LaVar Ball memes after UCLA’s loss to Kentucky
