By JOEDY McCREARY
AP Sports Writer
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) – Wayne Ellington had 17 points and fellow freshman Brandan Wright added 16 to lead No. 7 North Carolina to a 75-63 victory over Kentucky on Saturday in a game between college basketball’s winningest schools.
Reyshawn Terry also scored 16 points and capped the Tar Heels’ decisive run with a pair of 3-pointers.
North Carolina (7-1) never trailed and won its second high-profile nonconference game of the week at the Dean Smith Center, where the team is 3-0 this season.
The Tar Heels overcame Randolph Morris’ 23 points on 11-of-12 shooting to earn their third straight victory in this series. North Carolina is 41 behind the Wildcats’ NCAA record of 1,930 victories.
Wright has scored at least 10 points in each of his eight games as a Tar Heel. For Terry, this was his second consecutive strong performance against Kentucky. He had a career-high 25 in the Tar Heels’ win last December.
The pivotal 11-2 stretch in this one started with a lecture. Coach Roy Williams pulled his five starters with 17:16 remaining, apparently upset that they allowed Kentucky to make its first three shots in the second half and pull within 36-33.
Moments after Wright started the run with a hook shot, he and the other starters were benched for about 2 1/2 minutes while they caught grief from their coach.
When they returned, Terry apparently showed he got the message, hitting two 3-pointers 26 seconds apart to push the Tar Heels’ lead into double figures for the first time, 47-35, with just over 13 minutes left. Kentucky never got closer than nine the rest of the way.
Joe Crawford had 16 points and Bobby Perry added 12 for the Wildcats (4-3), whose three losses have come against ranked teams.
North Carolina, playing three days after a wild 98-89 victory over No. 3 Ohio State in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, found itself in an entirely different style of game against the Wildcats.
For the most part, Morris was Kentucky’s offense in the first half. He was 5-of-5 shooting with 11 points during the opening 20 minutes. The rest of the Wildcats were a combined 6-for-23 and went 0-for-9 from 3-point range – out of character for a team that entered shooting 36 percent from beyond the arc.
Yet Kentucky wouldn’t let the Tar Heels run away with it. North Carolina never led by more than eight points in the half.
Tyler Hansbrough, the star of the Ohio State win with 21 points, struggled against the Wildcats for the second straight season.
The sophomore preseason All-American has failed to reach double figures three times in his career – and two of those came against Kentucky. A year after scoring just six points against the Wildcats, Hansbrough finished this one with a season-low seven.
