North Carolina At Chapel Hill

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PITTSBURGH, Pa. – The No. 15 North Carolina women’s basketball team rebounded from an eight-point third-quarter deficit to beat Pitt 72-57 Thursday evening at the Panthers’ Petersen Events Center. The win was UNC’s sixth in a row, the program’s longest winning streak in Atlantic Coast Conference play since the 2012-13 season.

UNC is 15-5 overall and 6-3 in ACC play heading into another road game, this one on Sunday at Clemson. Pitt, which led for more than half the game, fell to 7-13 overall and 0-9 on ACC play.

Deja Kelly led Carolina with 23 points, her seventh 20-plus game of the season. She played all 40 minutes and was 7-14 from the field, 3-6 from three and 6-6 from the foul line.

Kennedy Todd-Williams scored a career-high 22 points, including 10 in the fourth quarter. This marks the 12th time since the start of her sophomore season that she has tied or reset her career high, and it’s the third time this season that two Tar Heels have topped 20 points in the same game. (Todd-Williams has been one of the two on all three occasions.)

Alyssa Ustby also reached double figures with 16 points and grabbed a game-high 11 rebounds for her seventh double-double of the season and the 22nd of her career. Ustby made a career-best seven free throws (on eight attempts), and she played all 40 minutes for the second time in the last six games.

The host Panthers shot 57.1 percent from the field in the first quarter, equal to the best this season by an ACC opponent. They cooled off in the second but still led 33-29 at halftime then extended that advantage to eight, 39-31, with just over seven minutes to play in the third quarter. The Tar Heels continued to chip away and eventually tied the game at 44-44 at the end of the period on a 5-0 run by Todd-Williams, who hit a second-chance three and then two free throws to knot the game.

In the fourth quarter, UNC outscored Pitt 28-13, shooting 75 percent (9-12) from the field. Kelly, Todd-Williams, Ustby and freshman Paulina Paris all played the full 10 minutes as the Tar Heels pieced together a 13-0 run midway through the period to put the game away.

Carolina’s 72 points marked the team’s highest scoring total in an ACC game this season and UNC’s .947 (18-19) free throw percentage is a season best.

The Tar Heels were without senior guard Eva Hodgson, a starter in the first 19 games of the season who was out with a non-Covid illness. Sophomore Destiny Adams made her second career start in Hodgson’s place.