Hubert Davis shares pride in Pete Nance for making a contribution

North Carolina forward Pete Nance is peaking as the regular season comes to a close. The senior transfer has been instrumental in the Tar Heels’ recent three-game winning streak, helping to keep their NCAA Tournament hopes alive.

Nance finished with a double-double in two of those games, including Monday’s 77-67 game against Florida State. UNC coach Hubert Davis was extremely complimentary of Nance’s play in a recent press conference, pointing to a Feb. 22 win against Notre Dame in which he recorded 11 points, 10 rebounds and a team-high five assists.

“I was very proud of Pete, but I was very proud of him earlier with Notre Dame,” Davis said. “There’s many ways that you can be a positive impact for a team and against Notre Dame, Pete led our team in assists. I think he had a double-double. Was perfect from the free throw line and had a season-high five offensive rebounds. So that was huge for us.”

Nance followed that effort up with 22 points and four blocks the following game in a win against No. 6 Virginia. He was a perfect 4-of-4 on his 3-point attempts in that game and went 3-of-6 from deep in the following contest against the Seminoles.

That sort of outside shooting is something the Tar Heels have been severely lacking. UNC ranks last in the ACC with a shooting clip of 31.2% from beyond the arc. However, they have shot over 40% in each of the past two games.

In the win against Florida State, four different Tar Heels players hit three 3-pointers. Davis believes that has made opened up the lane more, creating more scoring opportunities in the paint.

“Heading into (the Virginia) game, we talked and we said, ‘at the end of the day, we’re gonna have to be able to knock down some perimeter jump shots,'” he said. “Without us being able to shoot the ball from beyond the arc, it’s just not enough space for Armando to go to work. It’s not enough space for guys like RJ (Davis) and Caleb (Love) to be able to attack the basket consistently. He started us off and was really hot from 3. Just really happy for him.”

A transfer from Northwestern, Pete Nance has started 27 games for North Carolina this season to average 10.3 points and 6.1 rebounds. His recent stretch of play has been a welcome sight for a Tar Heels team fighting to get in the NCAA Tournament, and they’ll hope he can keep it up to close the regular season on Senior Night against Duke.

Tip-off between the UNC and Duke is set for 6:30 p.m. ET on Saturday in Chapel Hill.