North Carolina Tar Heels torch Kansas Jayhawks in 2nd half Friday. What happened?
Sparked by freshmen Darryn Peterson and Bryson Tiller, who combined for 23 early points, No. 19-ranked Kansas led No. 25 North Carolina by eight points at halftime in a battle of the bluebloods on Friday night at the Dean E. Smith Center.
It certainly looked as if the Jayhawks (1-1), who effectively handled a loud crowd in a recent 90-82 exhibition victory at Louisville, might cruise to their sixth straight win over the Tar Heels and 17th in 18 tries against ACC foes.
Oops …
North Carolina scored early and often, on the inside and beyond the arc, in torching the Jayhawks for 58 second-half points. The result was an 87-74 come-from-behind victory over the Jayhawks for UNC before a sellout crowd of 21,750.
That crowd included former KU and UNC coach Roy Williams and former KU coach/Tar Heels player and assistant coach Larry Brown.
“It was good,” Tiller said of the mood at halftime in the Kansas locker room, “but the feature focus was to not be complacent. I think we did that. We’ll know not to do that next time.”
Peterson, who scored 11 points in the first half, helped KU to a 37-29 advantage at the break. He finished with 22 points, three rebounds, three assists and two steals in 28 minutes. Perhaps most importantly, he did not suffer from any cramping, as he did in Monday’s season opener.
“I wouldn’t say anything changed,” Peterson said of the second half versus the first. “They started rolling.
“We let them start rolling,” Peterson added of the Tar Heels, who outscored KU 58-37 in the final 20 minutes.
Tiller, who made three straight 3-pointers amid a 12-0 spurt that gave KU its biggest lead of the game (10 points), did not score in the second half. He finished with 12 points (4-of-4 from deep) and two rebounds before fouling out with 9 1/2 minutes remaining.
KU coach Bill Self spoke about the difference in his team’s performance in the second half during his postgame news conference.
“I thought obviously it had to be something we ate or something we said at half,” Self said with a wry smile. “We came out and weren’t any good. They were great.
“We go from having control of the game to basically giving it all back plus some the first five minutes of the second half. That was the difference. We didn’t show much maturity — we’re really young — and didn’t show much adversity and poise when they made a run.”
Self — he called three timeouts early in the second half — saw North Carolina score in transition and inside seemingly at will.
Freshman Tar Heels sensation Caleb Wilson scored 24 points with seven rebounds and four assists. Senior Henri Veesaar added 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting with four rebounds.
“We probably should have fouled more. He (Veesaar) got behind us,” Self said. “Our ball screen coverage was awful the second half. It was pretty good the first half. They did a good job attacking us. Our standing height is not great. We’ve got to play bigger than our height is.
“We’ll get better at it (but) we didn’t handle the adversity when they were really cooking.”
Self praised UNC guard Seth Trimble for his defensive work on Peterson while scoring 17 points on 7-of-17 shooting.
“They got the best of us,” Tiller said of Carolina’s big men. “We’ve got to be more physical, but we’ll clean it up.”
Peterson said KU’s effort toward stopping Carolina’s transition in the second half “was not good enough. We’ll go back to the drawing board, watch film and clean it up next game. We’ll have other games (with loud environments) like this. This was the first time Bryson and I played a game like this.”
Self was not ready to push any panic buttons after losing to a ranked team on the road.
“It is adversity when you talk about the game, not adversity in the course of a season,” the coach said. “Things happen all the time. How many teams are going to beat Carolina on their home court when they get cooking like that?
“It teaches us that there’s a lot of things we’ve got to do to be better in those moments and be tougher and harder and more sound, which we obviously weren’t. And that’s on me, but if teams can’t handle adversity on Nov. 8, they’re probably in for a pretty long (season).“
KU will next meet Texas A&M-Corpus Christi at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Allen Fieldhouse.
This story was originally published November 7, 2025 at 9:22 PM.
