University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Round One
February 10, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Feb. 10, 2011
By Adam Lucas
It may not be this season (but it might be). At the outside, it'll be next season, because looking one year ahead is about the longest arc of maturity anyone in college basketball can hope for these days.
Here's the promise: at some point in the next 14 months, Carolina is going to play a big game. Maybe a big late regular-season game, or maybe a big postseason game. Someone is going to write a story chronicling how the Tar Heels arrived at that point. And that story will start in the Cameron Indoor Stadium locker room after Wednesday night's disappointing/encouraging/frustrating/heartening 79-73 loss to Duke.
All of those adjectives could have applied. It's possible the Tar Heels could have been feeling a mix of all of them as they sat in the miniscule visiting locker room, waiting for their head coach to address them.
What would you have said, if you were in charge right at that moment? All that emotion and all that intensity dumped into two hours of high-pitched commotion, and it is now your job to sum it up in five minutes or less. Do you play up the positive, the fact that the coaching staff of the defending national champions was outside publicly celebrating in a way that has rarely been seen after a February victory? Or do you bring the hammer, tell the team how they let it slip away, how a 14-point lead felt woefully insignificant less than two minutes into the second half?
Remember, at this exact point in time virtually no one had left the building. They were still standing in their seats, not wanting to leave because they wanted to squeeze every last moment of that experience, see one more detail. It was that kind of game. That's a powerful feeling and it lends itself to congratulating yourself for being part of it, even if you just sat and watched it.
Roy Williams, who had coached it, who had been right in the middle of it, said this to his team:
"I don't want to hear anything about moral victories. We had them. We let them get away. I don't want to hear any of that moral victory stuff."
You know what that means? It means the head coach of the Tar Heels believes. He thinks his squad is capable of going head-up with the current best team in the league and winning at one of the toughest places to win in America. That's worth something. Conveying that to them will pay dividends.
The problem on Wednesday was that the only way his team could learn about a game like that was to play in it. Forget about the fact that Carolina had won four of the previous five in Cameron. There wasn't one single player on the roster who had ever played a minute in a meaningful game in Durham. That game last year? That bore a resemblance to this one in the way that Christina Aguilera's Super Bowl national anthem was similar to Whitney Houston's. That game was essentially a shootaround.
This one was cutthroat. Here's the thing: up 43-29 at half, you knew Duke was going to make a run. I knew Duke was going to make a run. Roy Williams knew Duke was going to make a run. All of us have seen this enough times to know exactly what was going to happen: they'd increase the defensive pressure, they'd get a steal or two, there would be some arm-waving and maybe even floor-slapping, and then even though you were ahead you'd feel like you were behind.
And then what do you do?
That's the question Carolina wasn't able to answer on Wednesday. That's the situation that can't be simulated in practice. Sure, you can put 30 seconds on the Smith Center clock and tell the White team they're down by two points, but that's not the same as being up five with every passing lane closed and kids screaming at you from two feet away and the rim looks small and the ball doesn't bounce right and why is their shooter so hot? You have to be able to accept the fact that Duke doesn't win this game anywhere other than Cameron Indoor Stadium, but this game is at Cameron Indoor Stadium, so what's the plan?
That's when you have to be veteran enough to figure out what you do best, and do it. In this particular game, that meant getting the ball inside, where John Henson and Tyler Zeller had combined for 23 points and 15 rebounds in the first half. Too often in the final 20 minutes, the Tar Heel offense consisted of hoisting a contested jump shot too early in the shot clock.
"They double-teamed a lot (in the post) and pressured the guards a lot more so they couldn't get in position," Tyler Zeller said.
"To stop a run, you have to execute and get good shots," John Henson said. "We were able to do that a couple times, but a couple times we didn't."
In a game like this, that's enough to be the difference. You have to be able to do it all the time. No one on the roster had ever played meaningful minutes (Zeller playing in the national championship as an end-of-the-rotation player is very different than being the go-to offensive option) in a college game like that, where every possession feels like a must-score and every rebound feels pivotal. Let one rebound bounce away without getting a hand on it, even in the opening minute of the second half, and it's not just one lost notch in the box score. It's momentum, and to quell it takes either a spectacular physical performance or uncommon grit.
"That's the reason they call it the rivalry," said Kendall Marshall, the freshman who is rapidly making this his team. "It's a four-times-in-a-lifetime experience to play here. Once a year, you're going to play in Cameron. And once you do it one time, you know what you have to bring to the table in terms of mental capacity to do it. Now we know."
Independently, in three different parts of the locker room, three key Tar Heels came to the same conclusion about Wednesday's outcome.
Harrison Barnes: "We had a great opportunity tonight, and unfortunately we blew it."
John Henson: "I don't put much value in a good effort. We have to win. We don't want to take any kind of moral victory. We're supposed to win that."
Marshall: "The game's over. I'm sure people are saying, `Oh, Carolina was in it.' We're not about moral victories. We're here to win games."
There are times losses feel like an ominous foreshadowing of the future, like an end point. This was not one of those. This felt more like that last lesson that had to be taught. What was it Marshall said?
"Now we know."
Let's see what they do with that knowledge.
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.
