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UNC basketball escapes with win over Wake Forest to advance
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- UNC basketball escapes with win over Wake Forest to advance
North Carolina took the court at the Spectrum Center on Thursday afternoon for a quarterfinal matchup in the T. Rowe Price ACC Tournament against the No. 4-seeded Wake Forest. After a hot-shooting win over Notre Dame on Wednesday, the momentum did not spill over. In a game of runs, the Tar Heels came away with the 68-59 win to survive and advance to the semifinals.
The No. 5-seeded Tar Heels opened the game on a cold streak, going down 14-3 until the team made its second field goal of the game after eight minutes of action. However, at that point, it turned around, and North Carolina went on a 12-2 run to cut Wake Forest's lead to just one point.
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They went back and forth before ending the first half 33-31 with UNC up.
The Tar Heels then opened the second half with an 8-0 run to go up by 10 points in the first three minutes. After holding a 45-38 lead, they allowed Wake Forest to score eight unanswered points to tie the game at 45 a piece. The battle began after that. The final 10 minutes of the game saw almost a dozen lead changes before two huge plays from Ven-Allen Lubin led to a clutch three from RJ Davis to put North Carolina up four that would be too much for the Demon Deacons to overcome.
Davis led the team with 23 points, shooting 5-for-6 from three and 5-for-9 from the floor. Ven-Allen Lubin posted his second-straight double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds, despite playing with four fouls for the majority of the final 10 minutes. Seth Trimble came off the bench and had 10 points with four rebounds while shooting just 1-for-6 from the field.
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The Tar Heels will face the No. 1-seeded Duke in the semifinal on Friday night. This will be the third time these two teams have met this season, and neither one of these teams has won three straight in the same year against each other since 2002. That game will tip off at approximately 7:00 p.m. on Friday, March 14th.
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This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: UNC basketball keeps season alive with win over Wake Forest
