Balanced Tar Heels Open The Season With Big Win

Tuesday, November 9

Chapel Hill

4:30 PM

North Carolina

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North Carolina A&T

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N.C. A&T

North Carolina

After more than 600 days since her last game, Carlie Littlefield scored 15 points for the Tar Heels on Tuesday.

Photo by: Jerome M. Ibrahim

November 9, 2021 | Women's Basketball

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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The UNC women's basketball team got the season off to a blazing start Tuesday, beating North Carolina A&T 92-47 at Carmichael Arena to open 2021-22. Five Tar Heels scored in double figures, led by graduate student Carlie Littlefield and sophomore Alyssa Ustby with 15 points each.

UNC is 1-0 heading into a road game at Charlotte on Sunday afternoon. The Aggies fell to 0-1 and next will face Western Kentucky Friday in the Preseason WNIT.

Carolina never trailed Tuesday and led by as many as 52 points, 92-40 after a layup by sophomore Kennedy Todd-Williams with two minutes to play in the game. The Tar Heels shot 54 percent (34-63) from the field and 50 percent (7-14) from three.

"There were a lot of good takeaways, and a lot of next steps are going to be clear through film as well," said UNC coach Courtney Banghart, who kicked off her third season as the Tar Heels' head coach. "A shout-out to the fans – our student section was completely jammed and that was awesome."

Eva Hodgson, another graduate transfer, came off the bench for 13 points, hitting all five of her field goal attempts, including two from long-range. Sophomore Deja Kelly also had 13 points and was 2-for-2 from three-point range. Todd-Williams was the fifth Carolina player in double figures with 12.

Ustby led the way in rebounds with seven, Todd-Williams grabbed five, and freshman Destiny Adams came off the bench for five boards, along with seven points, in her 12 minutes of play.

Only three of the 14 players on the bench had been part of a Carolina game before the 2020-21 season, when crowds were strictly limited, so having fans in Carmichael was new for almost everyone and a very welcome sight for all.

"Collectively, it just felt really good to play in front of people in the stands," Kelly said. "I thought we came out with some great energy and just played really well together. We definitely picked it up in the second half. I think it was just exciting for all of us just to play basketball again."

The Tar Heels jumped out early, leading 20-8 after the first quarter and 45-21 at halftime. They scored the first 15 points of the third quarter to push the margin to 39 points before the Aggies got a post-halftime bucket.

The fourth quarter was the only one in which the Tar Heels shot below 50 percent from the field, and even then they hit 46.7 percent of their shots.

UNC scored 46 points in the paint and got 42 off turnovers.

The Aggies led 34-32 in bench points behind a team-high 16 from Jazmin Harris, who played 23 minutes off the bench and hit eight of her 13 field goal attempts.

In addition to Littlefield, Hodgson and Adams, freshman guard Morasha Wiggins also saw her first action in a Carolina uniform, scoring three points and grabbing two steals in playing just over 12 minutes off the bench.

"I was happy that through the roster people made contributions," Banghart said. "There wasn't any sort of 'I don't know what I'm doing' or 'I'm tentative.' It was people that have pride in helping us be good here and they did that."

Before coming to UNC, Littlefield was at Princeton which, as part of the Ivy League, didn't play at all in 2020-21. She counted the number of days it had been since her last game: 613

"I'm just so happy to be playing college basketball again and with this team," she said afterward. "The fans were great, we had a great student section and just a lot of fun with this team."