UNC Basketball: Biggest Takeaways from Rivalry Game with NC State

North Carolina's up-and-down 2014-15 season hit a new low Tuesday with its 58-46 home loss to rival North Carolina State.

The Tar Heels (19-9, 9-6) played their worst game of the season, dropping their fifth result in the last seven to slide further down the ACC standings. With three games remaining in the regular season, UNC sits in fifth place, a game behind Louisville for the race to get a bye into the ACC tournament quarterfinals.

More damaging than the seeding implications, though, the performance against the Wolfpack was completely lacking in energy, intensity or efficiency. Three days after scoring 89 points against Georgia Tech, UNC had its lowest-scoring output ever in the Dean Smith Center.

It also ended an 11-game home win streak against the Wolfpack, dating back to the start of coach Roy Williams' tenure, and it was just the third loss to NC State in 31 meetings under Williams.

With a two-game road trip starting Saturday in Miami (Florida) on the horizon, we take a look at what came from this latest disappointing result for the Heels.

(Lack Of) Speed Kills

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Roy Williams has never made it a secret that he likes his teams to play as fast as possible. Both at North Carolina and before that at Kansas, Williams' teams have routinely been among the highest-scoring in the country.

And while the point total has a major impact on the outcome, a more telling statistic is the number of possessions that happen in a game.

UNC ranks 23rd in Division I in possessions per 40 minutes, at 69.6, yet against NC State the Tar Heels only had 60 possessions. That dropped them to 4-7 in games with 67 or fewer possessions and 1-5 in those with 65 or less, per Andrew Carter of the Raleigh Observer.

Simply put, when teams slow it down and force UNC into a half-court game, the results have not been good. Now comes Miami, which is 304th in the nation in pace at 62.4 possessions per game.

Physical Play Inside Continues to Be a Problem

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Kennedy Meeks posted a double-double against NC State, with 12 points and 14 rebounds for his first double-digit rebounding performance since the previous game against the Wolfpack on Jan. 14.

It was a strong effort by the 6'9" junior forward, who had been struggling over the past few weeks. The rest of the Tar Heels post players, though? Not so much.

Forwards Brice Johnson, Isaiah Hicks, Joel James and Jackson Simmons combined for six points and eight rebounds on 2-of-11 shooting, and defensively they allowed NC State to get 20 points in the paint. In a low-scoring game when both teams shot below 36 percent, that's significant.

Paige Won't Shoot

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After notching 10 assists against Georgia Tech on Saturday for his first career double-double, Marcus Paige added another seven assists against the Wolfpack. Yet he only took eight shots for the second straight game, and his first attempt didn't come until there was 6:26 left in the first half.

As effective as Paige has been as a distributor of late, his lack of shooting is a troubling development. He finished with seven points on 3-of-8 shooting, making one of five from three-point range, and had attempted only four shots through the first 33 minutes.

Paige is now attempting 10.8 shots per game, two fewer than last season. If his accuracy was going up this would make sense, but that's not the case, as he's shooting 39.7 percent compared to 44 percent in 2013-14.

Justin Jackson Showed Life

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One of only two players to start every game this season (along with Marcus Paige) is freshman Justin Jackson, the 6'8" forward who has served as the small forward all year. He's fourth on the team in scoring at 9.8 points per game, but very rarely since ACC play began has he made much of an impact.

Against NC State, though, Jackson showed a new gear, one where he was actually displaying some assertiveness and taking chances in the second half.

After making two of seven shots before halftime, in the final 20 minutes Jackson stopped settling for jumpers and starting attacking the basket. He had three layups during a 10-0 run that got UNC within 36-32 midway through the second half, and he had 12 of his 16 points in the second half. Two of those second-half baskets were three-pointers, only the fourth time in his career he's hit more than one.

Crowd Influence Doesn't Matter

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After calling out UNC's fans for not showing enough vocal support during a blowout win over Georgia Tech, Roy Williams noted that the Dean Smith Center was much louder on Tuesday. Not that it mattered to what happened on the court, however.

"Our crowd was great tonight, and we let them down," Williams said in the postgame press conference. "I hate it for our crowd, too, because, god almighty, they were so loud. I challenged them last game and they came out and were fantastic. The basketball coach and the basketball team didn't stand up to our part."

Williams had been trying to use the lackluster crowd interaction from the past game as motivation for his team to play hard for the fans, and vice versa, yet the players didn't seem interested in matching that intensity. Now comes games in Miami and at Georgia Tech, where the crowds are likely to be doing a lot of screaming at UNC rather than for them.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.