No. 11 North Carolina bounces back, tunes up for Bruins
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Brice Johnson has been pretty consistent all season for No. 11 North Carolina. With a key big man out for a while, the Tar Heels needed even more from him.
Johnson had a career-high 25 points and 10 rebounds in North Carolina's 96-72 win over Tulane on Wednesday night.
Marcus Paige added 16 points and Justin Jackson had 13. The Tar Heels (8-2) won their first game without injured big man Kennedy Meeks and bounced back from a last-second loss at Texas that knocked them out of the top 10.
"That was my biggest goal today: just play harder and stay out of foul trouble," said Johnson, who was whistle-prone in the Texas loss. "With Kennedy being out, I knew I'd have to play a little bit more. ... I had to be able to step up."
Joel Berry II had 12 points and Isaiah Hicks finished with 11 for North Carolina, which never trailed, shot 50 percent and built a 43-33 rebounding advantage.
Louis Dabney scored 18 points for Tulane (6-5), which pulled to 70-55 on Malik Morgan's jumper with just over 8 minutes left.
The Tar Heels countered with 15 straight points — a burst that started with Johnson's jumper, included two 3-pointers from Paige and made it a 30-point game.
"We were hoping to get them just a little bit out of rhythm," Tulane coach Ed Conroy said. "For a while, it was OK. Then (later) in the second half, they got their rhythm back."
Rebounding was a point of emphasis in this one for the Tar Heels, who managed just four offensive boards — their fewest in 13 seasons under coach Roy Williams — in the loss to the Longhorns.
North Carolina also didn't have Meeks, who trails only Johnson among Tar Heels in rebounding but is out at least two weeks with a bone bruise in his left knee. Meeks averaged 12.3 points and 7.4 rebounds while starting the first nine games.
North Carolina gave 6-foot-11 senior Joel James his first start of the season, then turned Johnson loose on the Green Wave. He had 17 points in the first half, one more than his previous best this season, and surpassed his prior career best of 24 set in 2013 against Richmond.
"For a while, he was really a man on the backboards," Williams said.
Johnson has scored in double figures in every game this season but never scored more than 16, hitting that mark four times.
Theo Pinson finished with 10 points for the Tar Heels.
STAT SHEET
Williams called it "pretty good basketball" after the Tar Heels had 30 assists on their 36 field goals, with four players — Berry (9), Jackson (7), Hicks (3) and freshman Luke Maye (2) — either matching or surpassing their career highs in that category. It was North Carolina's first game with 30 assists since 2012, when it also had 20 against East Tennessee State.
TIP-INS
Tulane: The Green Wave fell to 11-50 against Top 25 opponents since 1989 and haven't beaten the Tar Heels since 1927 — by a 20-19 score — while losing 12 straight in the series.
North Carolina: Tulane assistant Shammond Williams returned to Chapel Hill for the first time as a coach. Williams played for the Tar Heels from 1994-98 and set the school's career record with 233 3-pointers — a mark that was broken in the Texas game by Paige. Both were honored before the game.
UP NEXT
Tulane is at Mississippi State on Saturday.
North Carolina plays No. 22 UCLA on Saturday in Brooklyn, New York.
