North Carolina defeated UNLV 78-51 in the quarterfinals of the 2020 Camping World Maui Invitational.
Tar Heel guard RJ Davis led all scorers with 16 points on 5-9 shooting, including 3-4 from three. UNC Senior Garrison Brooks added 14, making him the 78th player to score 1,000 career points as a Tar Heels.
UNLV scored the first 13 points of the game – the most points by an opponent to begin a game since Miami led 14-0 in the 2018 ACC
Tournament quarterfinal in Brooklyn. UNC closed the half on a 37-17 run, heading to the break with a 37-30 lead.
The second period was all Heels. They opened the half with 13-1 run, closing the door on any Runnin’ Rebels upset hopes. UNC out-scored UNLV 78-38 over the final 33:42.
After the win, Coach Roy Williams said he wasn’t worried about the 13 point deficit to open the game. He simply wasn’t happy about his team’s play.
“I told them at the first timeout I wasn’t worried about the score. I was just worried about how we were playing,” Williams said during the postgame Zoom conference. “So after the first six minutes or so, I thought we did some good things and got better and I hope we learned a lot from tonight.”
“I congratulated them after the game,” Roy added. “So I’m hoping that that will be something that will help them. But we have got to play better. I mean, you can’t spot a lot of people 13 and think you’re
going to come back and win. So we got to play better during that time period.”
Bryce Hamilton led the Rebels with 15 points, followed by Caleb Grill with 10 total points.
The Tar Heels will play Stanford in semifinals of the Camping World Maui Invitational, Tuesday at 4 p.m. ET.