North Carolina holds off Duke
NEW YORK » Luke Maye scored 17 points, including North Carolina’s last field goal with 5:33 remaining, and No. 12 North Carolina held off a late rally by No. 5 Duke to advance to the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament championship game with a 74-69 victory on Friday night.
The sixth-seeded Tar Heels (25-9) will face topseeded and top-ranked Virginia on Saturday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn in a rematch of the 2016 ACC championship, won by North Carolina.
North Carolina led by 15 when Maye hit a jumper with 5:33 left and it looked as if it would cruise into the title game. But the Tar Heels went cold and secondseeded Duke went on a 13-0 run, drawing within three on Gray Trent Jr.’s 3 with 50 seconds left.
The Tar Heels turned the ball over on consecutive possessions, but an offensive foul by Grayson Allen and then a missed 3 by Allen, trying to draw contact on Maye, stymied Duke (26-7).
Theo Pinson made two free throws with 3.2 seconds left to seal it and the Tar Heels snapped a six-game losing streak in the ACC Tournament to their most heated Tobacco Road rivals. VIRGINIA 64, CLEMSON 58 » Kyle Guy scored 15 points and No. 1 Virginia advanced to the championship game with a victory over No. 19 Clemson.
The top-seeded Cavaliers (30-2) got several crucial plays from role player Jack Salt down the stretch and will face fifth-ranked and second-seeded Duke or 12th-ranked and sixthseeded North Carolina for the tournament title Saturday night in Brooklyn.
Virginia’s only ACC Tournament crowns came in 1976 and 2014.
Shelton Mitchell had 18 points and Elijah Thomas added 15 for the fourthseeded Tigers (23-9), who remain the lone original member of the ACC that hasn’t won the conference tournament. Clemson was trying to reach the finals for only the third time.
Tigers leading scorer Marcquise Reed, who was averaging better than 16 points, was held to six on 2-for-14 shooting by the nation’s most suffocating defense. He missed nine of 10 tries from 3-point range.
Virginia built a 14-point lead with 13 minutes remaining and slowed the game down, but Clemson cut the deficit to five with 7:22 left. That’s when Salt, a 6-foot-10 junior center from New Zealand who was averaging 3.4 points and 4.1 rebounds, started coming up really big.
After tossing in a baby hook with 8:25 to go, he grabbed an offensive rebound, scored on a turnaround bank shot in the post and followed with another bucket inside at the five-minute mark to make it a nine-point game.