University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: One Play Shows World Of Difference
January 8, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 8, 2003
By Adam Lucas
A case study in the exceptionally fine line between winning and losing in major college basketball:
Saturday night at Miami, the Tar Heels and Hurricanes were tied with just seconds to play in regulation. During a timeout, Matt Doherty called for a play with a fairly high success rate--Raymond Felton was to start out on the wing, make a move on his man, and cut hard to the basket, presumably for an easy backdoor layup. There are other options off the play, but a simple layup looked like a game-winning strategy.
Felton made the cut but the pass never came, and the possession ended with a contested David Noel jumpshot. Eventually, Carolina lost in overtime.
Wednesday night at the Smith Center, again coming out of a timeout (this one with about seven minutes to play in the second half), Doherty called for the same play that had failed three days previously. Byron Sanders held the ball high over his head, saw the sliver of daylight between Felton and his defender necessary to trigger the pass--"Ray got wide open and I just threw it in there," Sanders said--and zipped it into the freshman point guard's hands for an easy basket.
Eventually, Carolina, a team that had played just four of 12 games at home while other schools around the country were fattening up on home cooking, would claim a 79-64 victory. It's just that simple. With the same conversion in Coral Gables on Saturday, UNC fans would have spent the past few days giddy at the late-game genius of their squad. Instead, they spent it fretting over a perceived collapse. One play, three seconds of action, affecting the mindset of an entire fan base.
ut especially with Sean May out with a broken foot, that's exactly how narrow the margin is for these Tar Heels. They're going to play a style that Carolina fans may not be accustomed to. They're going to fire from the perimeter, as the 35 three-pointers against Davidson prove, and they're going to have to create turnovers.
Naturally, those who tend toward pessimism will discount this win because it is "only Davidson." For those keeping track at home, "only Davidson" had exactly three losses coming into Wednesday's game: at Duke, at Arizona, and against Florida State at a neutral site.
"Only Davidson" is also one of those teams that sends a shiver up the back of squads across the country when they see them looming in an NCAA bracket. "Only Davidson" also, of course, posted a 58-54 victory in Chapel Hill last year.
How different is this Carolina team from last year's squad? The Tar Heels surpassed their point total from last year's Davidson debacle with 14 minutes left in the game. Last season, Peter Anderer was another in a long line of three-point marksmen against Carolina. This year, he was 3-of-10 from the field.
This game could well have divided the season. Lose to the Wildcats, and winning the Preseason NIT would have been a distant memory. Morale would have dropped deeper than the Titanic.
ut after a halting start that was highlighted by four points and an assist from Will Johnson, who was filling in for Rashad McCants--"I just wanted to light a little fire under him," Doherty said after the game--the Tar Heels refused to let that happen.
Over 18,000 fans left the Smith Center feeling pretty good about their team, probably equally as positive as they felt negative after the loss to Miami. The actual difference in those two games? About as large as the hair's better execution they got on one individual play that led to a layup.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
