No. 17 North Carolina weathered a 37-point performance from Dalton Knecht to beat No. 10 Tennessee 100-92 on Wednesday night in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the ACC/SEC Challenge.
Knecht’s 37 points matched the most scored by a UNC opponent in the Dean E. Smith Center, but the Volunteers (4-3) still lost their third straight game.
Tennessee had surrendered just 61.5 points per game in its first six contests, but UNC (6-1) had 61 by halftime.
Leading the Tar Heels was RJ Davis with 27 points on 5-of-11 shooting from 3-point land, while Armando Bacot added 22 points and 11 rebounds. Harrison Ingram chipped in 20 points, Cormac Ryan had 15 points and Elliott Cadeau dished out 10 assists.
Knecht exited the game with less than two minutes to play with an apparent ankle injury. Josiah-Jordan James added 20 points for the Vols.
The Tar Heels started the game with crisp ball movement, notching seven assists on their first nine made field goals. That helped UNC go on a 13-0 run to take a commanding 28-12 lead with 11:17 left in the first half.
A media timeout did not stop the bleeding for the Vols. The Tar Heels proceeded to embark on an 18-8 run over the next four minutes, jumping out to a 46-23 lead when Bacot made a pair of free throws with 7:22 remaining until the break.
UNC shot a perfect 16-for-16 from the free-throw line through the first 20 minutes of action. It finished with a 32-of-38 (84.2 percent) mark from the charity stripe.
Thanks to nine unanswered points, Tennessee trimmed the deficit to six with 1:39 to play, but it never got any closer. North Carolina won the rebounding battle 34-31 and shot 45.9 percent from the floor while the Vols shot 55.6 percent and committed 12 turnovers.
–Field Level Media
