WBB Hosts Duke Sunday For Senior Day

Sunday, February 27

Chapel Hill

4 PM

North Carolina

Duke

The Tar Heels and Blue Devils will face off Sunday for the second time this season.

Photo by: ANTHONY SORBELLINI

February 26, 2022 | Women's Basketball

Game Notes Get Tickets

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Returning to Carmichael Arena after back-to-back road wins, the North Carolina women's basketball team will close out the regular season on Sunday afternoon with a Tobacco Road rivalry game, hosting Duke for a 4 p.m. tipoff. To add even more excitement to the day, the Tar Heels will celebrate Senior Day, honoring graduate students Carlie Littlefield and Jaelynn Murray after the game.

The Tar Heels (22-5, 12-5 Atlantic Coast Conference) are looking for their first regular season sweep of Duke since 2013-14. The Blue Devils (16-11, 7-10 ACC) had won five in a row before Carolina's win in Durham last month.

The first 1,000 fans at the game will get free Jump Around t-shirts and UNC students have the chance to win one of four pairs of Jordans.

The game will air on the ACC Network. To listen, click here. For live stats, click here.

In addition to Littlefield and Murray, UNC will honor graduate athletic trainer Camille King and senior managers N.J. Hayes and Rachel Kapiko.

Noting the Tar Heels
• The Tar Heels are fifth in the NET rankings and 18th in both national polls. Carolina appeared in both preseason polls in 2015-16 (20th coaches, 22nd AP) but fell out as the season started and didn't show up again until this December. Carolina has been in the top five in the NET all but one day (fell to sixth) this season and took a jump in both polls – six spots in AP, five spots on the coaches' poll – after last week's wins.
• Carolina sophomore Deja Kelly is the reigning ACC Player of the Week. A two-time ACC Freshman of the Week last season, she averaged 22 points in the wins over Louisville and FSU to win her first career Player of the Week honor.
• In its last home game, UNC knocked off No. 3 Louisville, the highest-ranked team Carolina has beaten under third-year head coach Courtney Banghart. The Tar Heels are 12-1 at home this season.
• Deja Kelly leads UNC and is fourth in the ACC in scoring with 16.3 points per game, up from 11.0 per game last season. She has six games of 20+ points this season and is one of four Tar Heels averaging 9.5 ppg or more.

Battle of the Blues
• UNC and Duke are meeting for the 103rd time in a series that dates back to the 1975-76 season, Carolina's second year of varsity competition under the umbrella of the Department of Athletics. The series is tied at 51-51 after Carolina's win in Durham in January. Before that Duke had won the last five in a row and 12 of the last 13.
• Carolina won the season's first meeting, 78-62 on Jan. 27 in Durham. With both teams ranked at game time for the first time since 2015 (Duke was 21 by AP and 23 by the coaches, UNC was receiving votes in the AP poll and 22nd by the coaches), the Tar Heels took the lead for good at the end of the first quarter on a four-point play by Carlie Littlefield, who finished with nine points. Alyssa Ustby led the Tar Heels with 20 and Kennedy Todd-Williams scored 15 and led the rebounding effort with seven.
UNC committed a season-low six turnovers in earning a win over the Blue Devils for the first time since 2018. It was Carolina's first win in Durham since 2014.
• The last time the teams met in Carmichael was in UNC's Senior Day in 2020. The Blue Devils won 73-54 in the final game of the regular season for both teams.
• UNC's last win over Duke in Chapel Hill was on Jan. 21, 2018, 92-86 in overtime. Jaelynn Murray is the only current Tar Heel who participated in that game, starting and playing eight minutes. The Blue Devils have won the two Carmichael matchups since then.
• UNC's Carlie Littlefield and Duke's Emma Schmidt, both grad students, were high school teammates in Waukee, Iowa.

Tar Heel Trends
• Carolina has won the rebounding battle in its last seven games in a row, the longest stretch in ACC play since the 2013-14 season.
• Alyssa Ustby notched a points-rebounds double-double in four straight games and then had nine and nine against Louisville before turning in another double-double with 12 points and 10 boards at FSU. Before this streak, she'd never had double-doubles in back-to-back games. She has 12 this season, second in the ACC.
• Anya Poole is averaging 11.5 rebounds over the past two games (13 at FSU, 10 at UVA). For the season she's now at 6.7 per game, ninth in the league.
• UNC had a .683 free throw shooting percentage heading into the Miami game and is .811 in the six games since then, beginning with a 20 of 21 (95.2 percent) performance against the Hurricanes. The Tar Heels are coming off their worst night since then – 15-22 for .682 percent at Virginia – but are now at .713 for the season. The Tar Heels have made more free throws (381) than opponents have taken (305).

Numbers of Note
• UNC hit just one three against Virginia for a season low from long range. With 15 attempts, it was also a season low for percentage (.071) and marked the first time since November (vs. Washington) that Carolina had gone a half without hitting a three-pointer.
• UNC has shot significantly better from three-point range at home this season than away from Carmichael. The Tar Heels are shooting .340 from long range at home compared with .285 in games away from Carmichael (including road and neutral). For the season, UNC is shooting .315, ninth in the ACC.
• After going 4-4 in January, the Tar Heels are currently 6-1 in February.
• UNC got a season-high 29 points off turnovers on Thursday at Virginia. The previous high was 27 on three occasions, including in the Jan. 27 game at Duke.
• UNC is 13-0 (5-0 ACC) this season when shooting 40 percent or better from the field. Despite the 1-14 night from three-point range, the Tar Heels shot .473 overall against Virginia, their highest in ACC play this season.
• Before the Louisville game, UNC hadn't come back to win this season after trailing at the end of the first quarter. (They'd been trailing after the first 10 on two occasions, both of which ended in losses.) Now the Tar Heels have overcome an early deficit twice – they were down 20-16 to Louisville after the first and then down 14-13 at FSU.