Poor officiating sequence killed UNC's second-half momentum
North Carolina once again found themselves in a deep first-half deficit. A buzzer-beater that wasn't spared UNC's blushes to put the halftime margin at nine, but Michigan State eventually went up ten with 17:27 left in the game.
That's when the Tar Heels made their first serious push of the game. An RJ Davis lay-up brought the Tar Heels within eight, followed by an Elliot Cadeau transition lay-up, plus the foul. Cadeau then stole the ball from Tre Holloman and was fouled, giving UNC possession, which led to an RJ Davis three. Jae'Lyn Withers hit a lay-up, followed by Seth Trimble's own shot in the paint, plus the foul. An RJ Davis steal led to a Drake Powell transition lay-up that gave North Carolina its first second-half lead at 58-57, and Michigan State was on the ropes.
Then, a nonsense blocking foul was called on Cadeau, which led to Hubert Davis, he of "farting" instead of ****ing, getting assessed a technical foul. This was at the 13:16 mark. Michigan State hit both of the free throws to take the lead back; North Carolina never led again in the second half.
I can't express enough how awful that call on Cadeau was. Michigan State was clearly going to call a timeout. The refs had allowed a typical Sparty-style physical bout to take place for the previous 23 minutes, so why would they call a soft block when the Spartans were clearly about to take a time-out? We'll never know. But what we do know is that any chance UNC had of transforming that momentum into a serviceable lead went out the window. The wind got taken out of their sails.