University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: A Familiar Feeling
December 3, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Dec. 3, 2011
By Adam Lucas
LEXINGTON--Before the question was even fully asked, Kendall Marshall knew the answer.
"Have you ever seen the film of the play when Rashad and Raymond..."
"When they got crossed up at Duke?" Marshall said.
Yes, that is it exactly. When they got crossed up at Duke. You remember it: Feb. 9, 2005. Duke 71, Carolina 70. Maybe you don't remember the date or the score, but you remember the aftermath: Raymond Felton and Rashad McCants, standing chest to chest on the sideline in front of the Tar Heel bench, the ball having trickled out of bounds after a botched last-second play, fans celebrating all around them. Carolina had the ball and a chance to win, one possession in a one-point game, score or go home.
The Tar Heels went home. Felton and McCants were stone-faced, and given all that had transpired over the previous 18 months, you wondered if they might ever get it. They didn't speak, just stared. It might be the signature moment of the first year and a half of the Roy Williams era at Carolina and at the time, it was cause for much consternation in the world of Tar Heel basketball.
That image was replaced two months later with the picture of Sean May, "that big sweaty rascal," as the head coach likes to call him, sprinting towards Williams, ready to celebrate a national title.
There's no way to know if this season will end like that one. But nothing that happened Saturday afternoon in front of the 8th largest crowd in Rupp Arena history makes it any less likely that the Tar Heels could end up playing on the final weekend of the season. That's why you play games like this one--to find out if you're good enough. Both of these teams, it appears, are good enough.
Carolina could have been--maybe should have been--two points better. They had the ball and a chance to win, on the road, in front of a crowd that had been standing for most of the last half-hour. They'd reached that point in the most unlikely of ways: by struggling in the paint but catching fire from the perimeter. Saturday morning when you woke up, if someone had told you the Wildcats were going to own a 36-14 advantage in the paint, you probably would have spent your noon hour unboxing some Christmas decorations rather than parked in front of the television.
That was indeed the final tally, and yet the Tar Heels were right there. That's largely because of what is turning into a formidable group on the perimeter. For months, the expectation has been that it's a choice: Reggie Bullock or P.J. Hairston. Pick one and go with him, and that's the outside scorer to complement the UNC post attack.
But what if it's not either Bullock or Hairston? What if it's both?
Combine them on Saturday, in Carolina's most competitive game of the year, and you get 33 minutes, 6-of-12 from the field, 5-of-9 from the three-point line, 19 points, 5 rebounds and just 1 turnover. Not in the boxscore is the savvy both players showed throughout the game. During the first-half spurt, Bullock had an open three-pointer on the left wing, but passed it up in favor of a bullet pass to Hairston, who was even more wide open and knocked down a three-pointer. The sophomore from Kinston also drew a charge, went nearly into the seats to secure a second-half loose ball, made a cold-blooded three-pointer with under a minute to play, and secured the rebound with 20 seconds remaining of the missed Marquis Teague free throw that gave the Tar Heels the chance to win.
"They work well together because neither one of them is selfish," Marshall said.
"If we're in the game together, and we're on the fast break with one guy trying to guard both of us, that's not going to work," Hairston said. "Because if he goes to Reggie, Reggie is going to pass it to me. And if he goes to me, I'm passing it to Reggie."
There are pieces on this team--pieces that were an uncertainty at Late Night (Will Bullock be healthy? How do the Tar Heels make up for losing Leslie McDonald? Can this freshman Hairston contribute?)--that are fitting. They still have their quirks. The stone-faced Bullock who drained the late three-pointer--he's done that two games in a row now, because he also drained a huge oen against Wisconsin--looked invincible. A few minutes later, he was asking for assistance from team manager Griffin Pugh to knot his necktie, proving that there are some things tougher than pressure shots.
Even with all five starters back from last year, there is nothing about the 2012 Tar Heels that is a finished product. Harrison Barnes will find a rhythm. Hairston and Bullock's production is likely to wax and wane as Williams tries to identify the perfect mix. And, yes, there will need to be some success in the late-game situations that have escaped the Tar Heels in the first month.
It's reasonable to question that final possession that ended up with the ball in Zeller's hands in the post. Carolina had three timeouts remaining and chose not to call one. Why not? Well, no matter what they would have diagrammed if they'd called a timeout, they would have been ecstatic to get the ball right where it was, to Zeller in the post.
And there will be questions about the reaction to Anthony Davis's block of John Henson's jumper, which the Tar Heel junior had hit consistently early in the game. Why didn't the Tar Heels foul at some point over the next 4.6 seconds?
They should have, unquestionably. You were screaming, "Foul!" at home and the coaches were screaming, "Foul!" on the sideline. Roy Williams was sprinting up the sideline, screaming, "Foul!" But they didn't.
"It was the end of the game, and it's one of those situations where you're shocked at what happened," Zeller said. "You have a mental lapse and do something that's unacceptable. We have to get better."
The big man sounded remarkably like the aftermath of the Duke game in Feb. 2005. Somewhere in that brain freeze in Lexington, as players watched helplessly as the Wildcats squeezed the last seconds off the clock, you could almost see Felton and McCants standing there.
Marshall wasn't the only one who drew an association with 2005. That's the value of having former players on the staff. Before the Tar Heels had even changed out of their uniforms to head back to Chapel Hill for the longest homestand in modern program history, Jackie Manuel was reminding them of the past. "This isn't the end," he told them in the locker room. "We lost four games in 2005, and we won the national championship."
That might feel incredibly obvious, but given the hype this team heard all summer, it was a nice reminder that nothing is final about the 2012 Tar Heels. Two losses before exams did feel a little bit like a disaster, so it was a relief to hear that it is manageable. There is no guarantee this season will finish like 2005. What we know for sure right now is that in Lexington in early December, Kentucky is one point better than Carolina. There are areas to improve--rebounding, defense, and converting in the paint will be areas of emphasis in December.
How do the Tar Heels progress over the next three months to make the outcome different in a possible next meeting in March? The answer to that question will be what we ultimately remember about the 2012 Tar Heels, not some fumbled last-second play. As Manuel reminded his pupils--yes, Manuel is the old guy now, a full ten (ten!) years older than some of this year's players--that's when we get to make final judgments about the merits of this season.
"We needed to hear what Jackie said," Marshall said. "They learned from that play at Duke. And I'm sure we will, too."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter and Facebook
