CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The magic carpet ride for tiny Wagner College ended on Thursday in the form of a 90-62 loss to mighty North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament first round at the Spectrum Center.
Wagner’s improbable run into its second NCAA Tournament in school history despite a depleted roster that was down to just seven healthy players wasn’t enough to overcome No. 1 seed North Carolina in what essentially was a home game for the Tar Heels.
Wagner had advanced to this stage by winning its conference tournament with all road games and then defeating Howard in Tuesday’s “First Four’’ game in Dayton, Ohio.
As expected, given the toughness No. 16 seed Wagner, a 24.5-point underdog, has shown this season, the Seahawks did not go easily.
The final score was not indicative of how close Wagner kept the game — at least within striking distance.
The Seahawks, who finished the season 17-16, were within 60-48 halfway through the second half before North Carolina asserted its depth and closed out the game on a 30-13 run with Wagner looking gassed on defense.
The game was tied at 13-13 after a Julian Brown 3-pointer with 13:50 remaining in the first half. It was tied at 15-15 after another Brown basket a minute later.
North Carolina, now 28-7, then scored the next seven points to take a 22-15 lead and it pulled away from there, just too strong, too talented and — most importantly — too deep for Wagner.
The Tar Heels were ahead 31-21, their largest lead of the first half at the time, at the 7:26 TV timeout, and at that point they were out-rebounding Wagner 16-7, they were shooting 64.7 percent from the field to Wagner’s 34.8 percent and were outscoring Wagner 20-8 in points in the paint.
The Tar Heels took their largest lead of the half at 40-26 on a killer 3-pointer from Cormac Ryan with 1:52 remaining before the intermission.
The Seahawks scored the final basket of the half, from Keyonae Lewis with 20 seconds remaining to make it 40-28 at the half.
Wagner’s top player, Melvin Council Jr., who was the star of the show in the win over Howard, struggled to get shots to go down in the first half, shooting just 3-for-13 from the field, though he still led the Seahawks with 10 points through the first 20 minutes.
He finished with 18 points on 6 of 20 shooting.
Council Jr. scored 21 points, had five rebounds and seven assists while playing all 40 minutes against Howard.
He became the first player with 20 or more points, five or more rebounds and five or more assists while shooting at least 50 percent from the field, not committing a foul since 1984, according to OptaSTATS.
He simply couldn’t find that same mojo against the taller, more athletic and deeper Tar Heels, who were determined not to let him beat them.
Allen, the Wagner sophomore, scored 15 points on 3-for-4 shooting from 3-point range against Howard.
He scored eight in the first half against UNC, but got into foul trouble with three in the first half and finished with 18 points Thursday.
In the end, Wagner simply had no answers for North Carolina big man Armando Bacot, who scored 14 points and had 11 rebounds in the first half alone. Bacot finished with 20 points and 15 rebounds.
RJ Davis got hot in the second half and led all scorers with 22 points.
Charlotte native Jae’Lyn Withers came off the bench and hurt Wagner with 10 points and five rebounds in the first half. Withers killed Wagner inside and was 6-of-9 from the foul line.
Withers, who finished with 16 points, made as many free throws as Wagner took as a team in the first half.
A perfect illustration of what Wagner was up against, it was outr-ebounded 43-24 for the game and outscored 26-6 by North Carolina bench players.