University of North Carolina Athletics
Latta Keeps Championship Promise
March 5, 2007 | Women's Basketball
March 5, 2007
By Lauren Brownlow
Ivory Latta was just a freshman, but she was a starter and the loss to Duke in the 2004 ACC Championship game made her 0-3 against Duke. Tears were running down her face, but she, fellow freshmen Camille Little and the rest of her teammates were forced to watch the Blue Devils celebrate their 63-47 victory over the Tar Heels.
She did not yet know the history behind the ACC Tournament, but Coach Sylvia Hatchell did. She had seen her teams appear in nine of the last 11 ACC Tournament Championship games and fail to win any of the last five, while the Blue Devils won five straight. She wanted to make her young team
"I wasn't trying to do it to be mean or anything, but I wanted these young players to see what the experience was of winning the ACC Championship. It was tough. It hurt. There were a lot of tears," Coach Hatchell said.
"I remember Ivory came over and she sat down beside of me and she said, `Coach, as long as I'm here, this won't happen again. I promise you that we will win, if we're in the championship game, that we're going to win it. I promise you this.' She kept her promise, and today she became the all-time leading scorer at the University of North Carolina in women's basketball."
She kept her promise, and set the all-time scoring record in fighting fashion, on a breakaway lay-up in transition with 8:19 to go in the first half. There was no fanfare, no fist-pumping, no yelling - she just got back on defense as if nothing had happened. Latta scored 20 of Carolina's 60 points and shot 7-of-15 from the field (4-of-9 from the three-point line) in 32 minutes. She played just 12 minutes in the first half due to picking up her third foul guarding Ashley Key in transition with 5:06 to go in the first half. But she would not pick up another foul in 20 minutes of second-half action.
Even while out of the game, Latta was involved. She stood up often, clapped her hands together as she would in the game and implored her teammates to `Come on!' On one play towards the end of the first half, Latta and Coach Hatchell directed traffic, and Latta shouted instructions to Alex Miller, who maintained her dribble next to the bench as the seconds ticked off the clock. She might have been mistaken for an enthusiastic assistant coach if not for her uniform.
"I definitely remember that conversation. I just know that after the game we lost, I just had tears in my eyes. I went down there with Coach and I was like, `Look, while I'm here, this will never happen again.' She looked at me, and she said, `Okay.' Ever since I've been here, I kept my promise to her. She's always kept promises with us and she's always true to her word and everything, so I had to be true to my word with her," Latta said.
But Latta came through in the clutch. An NC State three-pointer cut Carolina's lead to 55-52 with 1:46 left. Erlana Larkins was fouled, and missed the front end of a 1-and-1. After an NC State miss on the other end, Carolina emerged with it and Latta ran the offense until the shot clock ran down, then drove, made a fantastic ball fake and scored a lay-up as the shot clock expired with 36.1 seconds left to put Carolina up 57-52.
"Coach called a play for me. I can't tell you what the play was, but Coach called a play for me. I just tried to read the screen and I went off the screen. I just saw her playing good defense, and I tried to drive and kick but the player wasn't coming off of my player. So I just gave a little fake and went on the basket, and I had a wide-open lay-up," Latta said.
On the other side, Ashley Key felt awful. NC State wanted to complete its improbable run with an ACC Tournament Championship. Just getting there wasn't good enough. Those girls wanted to win it for their coach Kay Yow, who has been struggling with breast cancer. Those girls had been running on little more than passion and heart for two games and 39 minutes, but the Tar Heels were finally able to pull away. If you're a Carolina fan, you're thrilled. If you're not, you're sad that this story didn't have the magical ending.
"This is almost a situation where if you lose, you feel bad, and if you win, you don't really feel bad but you just know what Kay's going through and how hard that team played. If I wasn't coaching Carolina, I probably would have been pulling for them today, too," Coach Hatchell said.
Key was guarding Latta on that lay-up, and Latta's head fake caught her in the air. She hung her head in the press conference, up on stage sitting next to her coach.
"Ivory made a good play and she scored. I just want that moment back," Key said.
She sat next to Kay Yow, whose voice has been affected by chemotherapy and who was struggling to get full sentences out without coughing or taking a drink of water. Yet Yow was defending her star player because she had played a few too many minutes of basketball over a weekend.
"She's talking about that last defensive play, but 40 minutes, that's tough. Looking back, maybe I should have given her a little break and then put her back in," Yow said.
Coach Hatchell has known Kay Yow for many years, and has said on many occasions that she would not have been at North Carolina were it not for Yow.
"When you experience the things that we've experienced together and you see someone going through what she's going through, it hurts. When we played over at NC State, it was very emotional for me that night. Maybe I could have done a better job coaching my team that night, I don't know. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that when we played over there, we went through it already," Hatchell said.
With ACC play over, Carolina looks to be a likely No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They have started out their new season - the postseason - 3-0, and look to extend that record even further. Both Yow's Wolfpack and the Tar Heels will have a whole new chance to go on another winning streak.
Lauren Brownlow is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
