CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — When the Terrapins men’s basketball team traveled to the Dean E. Smith Center to play North Carolina last January, its players tilted back their heads to see the bevy of banners hanging from the rafters emblazoned with the Carolina blue of all-time greats, extolling the program’s ACC and NCAA championships.

So the six Terps making the return trip to Chapel Hill, N.C., knew that last night’s bout with the Tar Heels would provide a significantly stiffer test than Saturday’s road victory at Virginia Tech, where Cassell Coliseum simply celebrated postseason appearances instead of titles.

Yet even with the previous experience, the Terps looked frazzled in the opening minutes of their final ACC game at North Carolina, got off to a horrid start and fell, 75-63, in an up-tempo contest, squandering another opportunity at a much-needed quality win.

Despite some encouraging stretches, the Terps (13-10, 5-5 ACC) could never recover after the Tar Heels (15-7, 5-4) scored the game’s first 11 points.

“In the first half, I feel like we came out on our tippy-toes,” forward Charles Mitchell said. “We wasn’t playing aggressive enough, and we had to come from a deficit. So we had to fight our way back into the game instead of just playing basketball.”

The Terps settled in, though, and quickly trimmed North Carolina’s lead to three points with just more than eight minutes left in the first half. But their offense was somewhat disjointed, and the team committed 29 personal fouls and 16 turnovers in the game, which kept it from completing the comeback and extending a two-game winning streak.

North Carolina guard Marcus Paige made the key plays down the stretch to bury the Terps. The 2012 McDonald’s All-American scored 18 of his 25 points in the second half and outdueled guard Dez Wells, who finished with 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting.

“I though we did a lot of things well,” coach Mark Turgeon said of the second half. “Paige was just too good. He hit shot after shot every time we got it close.”

The Terps, who finished the game shooting 39.3 percent from the field, could never quite catch the Tar Heels. Forward Brice Johnson, who had 19 points and shot 8-of-8 from the field, coupled with Paige to create a tandem the Terps failed to slow down.

Plus, the Terps were hampered with foul trouble all game long. Wells, Mitchell — who had five points and a game-high 13 rebounds — and forward Jake Layman each picked up two fouls in the first half.

After the Terps almost erased North Carolina’s early lead, the Tar Heels ended the half on an 11-2 run while Turgeon had to sit those three foul-plagued starters. So after trailing by 16 about five minutes into the game, the Terps trailed by 12 at halftime.

“We were just trying to patchwork it, trying to get through the half,” Turgeon said. “To win, you can’t start a game that way, and you can’t finish a half that way.”

In the second half, the Terps cut into the lead again as their offense improved on the strength of Wells’ 13 second-half points. The Terps, though, never staged a defining run as Paige and the Tar Heels seemed to respond with a basket each time Turgeon’s team compiled some momentum.

In the end, it was the Terps’ sluggish start that cost them. And it didn’t take much time for North Carolina to jump ahead, either. Coach Roy Williams’ team won the tip, and on its first possession, forward James Michael McAdoo drained a mid-range jumper.

Layman coughed up the ball on the Terps’ opening possession, leading to a Tar Heels fast break that ended with McAdoo finishing a put-back slam dunk.

That burst for North Carolina persisted, and the hosts jumped out to an 11-0 lead just two minutes into the game. They were up 19-3 by the 15-minute mark.

“They came out really well,” said forward Evan Smotrycz, who finished with 14 points. “We got a couple shots blocked. Then they weren’t missing. They had a couple easy dunks.”

The Terps responded with their own 16-3 run after that, and they did have some positive moments. Turgeon mentioned he was pleased with the Terps’ resilience and believes his team continues to buy into his system.

Still, the early deficit proved to be too much, and the Terps left the decorated Dean Dome for the last time as a conference opponent with a postseason resume that still lacks a signature victory.

“We had a bad start,” Turgeon said. “We couldn’t afford a bad start, and we had one.”

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