LUCAS: ONE LIKE THIS...
For one night only, old school Atlantic Coast Conference basketball came back.
Carolina outlasted Louisville, 90-83, in a game that could have been played at Cole Field House or Reynolds Coliseum. This one should have aired on Raycom with Billy Packer on the call as Dinah Shore gave out the Holly Farms Player of the Game while Lefty Driesell gave the choke sign on the sideline and Terry Holland (you know, he really does look like Tom E. Smith) whined about the officiating.
"That was one of the craziest environments I've ever seen," said Armando Bacot, who contributed 19 points and 22 rebounds while being held and hacked for most of the evening. "There were cups getting thrown, there were technical fouls, there were fans getting into it."
And that was just in the overtime period.
Here's what you have to understand before we go any further: Louisville is a different place. When the Cardinals are good, it's one of the toughest places to play in the league. And when the Cardinals aren't as good, it's still one of the angriest places to play in the league.
Make no mistake: Carolina was solely responsible for letting the game devolve into what it became. The Tar Heels had a 55-45 lead with approximately 12 minutes to play, and were poised to put it away and cruise in with a victory against a depleted Cardinal squad that was down both a player and a coach.
Instead, the Tar Heels went through one of the worst stretches of the season to allow Louisville back into the game. Once that happened, it turned into a soap opera.
Leaky Black had warned his teammates earlier in the day that this could happen. "Leaky talked at shootaround about how he was here his freshman year when we won here," Hubert Davis told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game. "He talked about the environment and how tough it was and how tough you have to be to win at this place."
And that's an important key to remember. Despite all the drama, despite all the missed opportunities, despite some of the frustrating plays: Carolina won the game. There was a time earlier this season when they might not have.
As Bacot so indelicately but truthfully put it: "On the road, when it gets tough, sometimes we have curled up into a ball. We showed a lot of maturity and toughness today."
They took their cues from their head coach. Down two late in the game, Davis looked at his huddle and grinned. Remember, Carolina was coming off two road blowouts at Miami and Wake Forest. This, as Davis saw it, was improvement. "If you'd told us a few days ago that we'd be down only two in this hostile environment, we would have taken it," he told his team. "It's 2-0. Put everything else in the past and go win the game."
Somewhere, Dean Smith is probably grinning, because that sounds exactly like him. And Roy Williams is surely grinning, although we know exactly where he was—seated behind the Carolina bench, listening to a Louisville fan a couple rows behind him scream at him until the fan was red-faced.
Williams turned around and smiled, probably beginning to smell the aroma of postgame Louisville brownies. "How's your blood pressure?" he asked.
Watching that game probably wasn't good for it. With 1:10 left, even the officials, who had experienced a challenging night, were yelling at each other. It made you appreciate the way the Carolina coaches had handled the closing minutes of regulation. At the under-8 timeout with the lights in the Yum Center flashing and the well-lubricated crowd screaming, Caleb Love was visibly frustrated with some of his second half mistakes.
But there was Jeff Lebo, standing with an arm around Love's waist during the timeout, calmly talking into his ear and trying to keep him in the game. Love eventually opened the overtime session with a three-pointer and made some clutch free throws. By the end, it was Louisville that had lost its composure, with the crowd chucking debris on the court and coach Mike Pegues earning an ill-timed technical foul for slapping the scorer's table after a dubious call.
Carolina stumbled and struggled. But it also won. That's important for this group, because they haven't won very many like this. Tuesday night might have looked familiar to you because you've been a Tar Heel fan for decades. But Love and Bacot and RJ Davis needed to experience a game like this one ending positively. They needed to know that you can take the other team's best shot, featuring El Ellis scoring 25 points after halftime. You can listen to the crowd calling you names. You can make a couple of mistakes.
You can do all of that, and you can still win one of these. Get enough of the tiny little winning plays—Puff Johnson drawing a charge that wiped out a Cardinal basket in regulation, Brady Manek immediately answering multiple big Louisville baskets with hoops of his own, Love feeding Bacot for a three-point play with under a minute to go—and they eventually turn into a victory. And then it gets mighty fun to walk off the court while a sea of middle fingers jabs the air frustratedly. If there isn't at least one moment where you're subtly scoping out the safest exit strategy, are you really winning an impressive road game?
"This was about grit," said RJ Davis, who had 18 points and hit four three-pointers. "That's what it came down to. The game went into overtime and we wanted to stay together. The crowd was against us and we wanted to stay together."
For one night only, old school Atlantic Coast Conference basketball came back.
Carolina outlasted Louisville, 90-83, in a game that could have been played at Cole Field House or Reynolds Coliseum. This one should have aired on Raycom with Billy Packer on the call as Dinah Shore gave out the Holly Farms Player of the Game while Lefty Driesell gave the choke sign on the sideline and Terry Holland (you know, he really does look like Tom E. Smith) whined about the officiating.
"That was one of the craziest environments I've ever seen," said Armando Bacot, who contributed 19 points and 22 rebounds while being held and hacked for most of the evening. "There were cups getting thrown, there were technical fouls, there were fans getting into it."
And that was just in the overtime period.
Here's what you have to understand before we go any further: Louisville is a different place. When the Cardinals are good, it's one of the toughest places to play in the league. And when the Cardinals aren't as good, it's still one of the angriest places to play in the league.
Make no mistake: Carolina was solely responsible for letting the game devolve into what it became. The Tar Heels had a 55-45 lead with approximately 12 minutes to play, and were poised to put it away and cruise in with a victory against a depleted Cardinal squad that was down both a player and a coach.
Instead, the Tar Heels went through one of the worst stretches of the season to allow Louisville back into the game. Once that happened, it turned into a soap opera.
Leaky Black had warned his teammates earlier in the day that this could happen. "Leaky talked at shootaround about how he was here his freshman year when we won here," Hubert Davis told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game. "He talked about the environment and how tough it was and how tough you have to be to win at this place."
And that's an important key to remember. Despite all the drama, despite all the missed opportunities, despite some of the frustrating plays: Carolina won the game. There was a time earlier this season when they might not have.
As Bacot so indelicately but truthfully put it: "On the road, when it gets tough, sometimes we have curled up into a ball. We showed a lot of maturity and toughness today."
They took their cues from their head coach. Down two late in the game, Davis looked at his huddle and grinned. Remember, Carolina was coming off two road blowouts at Miami and Wake Forest. This, as Davis saw it, was improvement. "If you'd told us a few days ago that we'd be down only two in this hostile environment, we would have taken it," he told his team. "It's 2-0. Put everything else in the past and go win the game."
Somewhere, Dean Smith is probably grinning, because that sounds exactly like him. And Roy Williams is surely grinning, although we know exactly where he was—seated behind the Carolina bench, listening to a Louisville fan a couple rows behind him scream at him until the fan was red-faced.
Williams turned around and smiled, probably beginning to smell the aroma of postgame Louisville brownies. "How's your blood pressure?" he asked.
Watching that game probably wasn't good for it. With 1:10 left, even the officials, who had experienced a challenging night, were yelling at each other. It made you appreciate the way the Carolina coaches had handled the closing minutes of regulation. At the under-8 timeout with the lights in the Yum Center flashing and the well-lubricated crowd screaming, Caleb Love was visibly frustrated with some of his second half mistakes.
But there was Jeff Lebo, standing with an arm around Love's waist during the timeout, calmly talking into his ear and trying to keep him in the game. Love eventually opened the overtime session with a three-pointer and made some clutch free throws. By the end, it was Louisville that had lost its composure, with the crowd chucking debris on the court and coach Mike Pegues earning an ill-timed technical foul for slapping the scorer's table after a dubious call.
Carolina stumbled and struggled. But it also won. That's important for this group, because they haven't won very many like this. Tuesday night might have looked familiar to you because you've been a Tar Heel fan for decades. But Love and Bacot and RJ Davis needed to experience a game like this one ending positively. They needed to know that you can take the other team's best shot, featuring El Ellis scoring 25 points after halftime. You can listen to the crowd calling you names. You can make a couple of mistakes.
You can do all of that, and you can still win one of these. Get enough of the tiny little winning plays—Puff Johnson drawing a charge that wiped out a Cardinal basket in regulation, Brady Manek immediately answering multiple big Louisville baskets with hoops of his own, Love feeding Bacot for a three-point play with under a minute to go—and they eventually turn into a victory. And then it gets mighty fun to walk off the court while a sea of middle fingers jabs the air frustratedly. If there isn't at least one moment where you're subtly scoping out the safest exit strategy, are you really winning an impressive road game?
"This was about grit," said RJ Davis, who had 18 points and hit four three-pointers. "That's what it came down to. The game went into overtime and we wanted to stay together. The crowd was against us and we wanted to stay together."
