University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Fire Burning
February 1, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Feb. 1, 2012
By Adam Lucas
WINSTON-SALEM--"You guys smell something burning?" Roy Williams asked the media as he took his seat for Tuesday's postgame press conference. He was greeted mostly by blank scares.
"Well, we know it wasn't the nets," the head coach wryly observed.
That might be the most memorable moment to emerge from Carolina's 68-53 win over Wake Forest, a game that seemed to be the Atlantic Coast Conference equivalent of Alexander's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. How stultifying was it? The Tar Heels even picked up an exceedingly rare shot clock violation in the second half.
Most ACC upsets occur when one team performs at a higher than expected level. The question for most of Tuesday was whether either squad would emerge from the muck.
But it was a win.
"Sometimes you have to win ugly to have a great season," Williams said. The Tar Heels aren't into "great season" territory just yet. But they're sitting 19-3 facing what feels like a pivotal trip to Maryland this weekend. And for all the bad things about Tuesday night's game--Carolina shot 31.0%, the lowest percentage in a UNC win since Dec. 2003, while Wake countered with 29.6%, and the teams combined to go 6-37 (16.2%) from the three-point line--Winston-Salem has been a tough place to play, and some very solid teams (from the Roy Williams era alone, 2005 and 2009) have lost there.
This one was different. Officially, it goes as a road win. Unofficially, it lends the Tar Heels only minimal road credibility. If the listed attendance of 12,865 was correct, then at least 6,000 of them wore blue. From the time the Demon Deacon revved his motorcycle in pregame introductions, it was nothing close to the inferno that has sometimes greeted Carolina during the Childress or Duncan or Paul years.
Can we pause for a quick moment here to discuss that crowd? It was half blue, and that might be a conservative estimate. Ever since Sam Cassell first confused his metaphors and labeled the Smith Center a "cheese and wine crowd" in the early 1990s, it's been fashionable to bash Tar Heel fans. Well, here's a fact: they turn out.
It's not quite the Green Bay Packers or Boston Red Sox in terms of traveling road shows, but it's enough to be noticeable, home and away. Nine times already this season, in an era when high definition television is supposed to be rendering the in-person fan attendance obsolete, crowds of over 20,000 have packed the Smith Center.
Tuesday night, in a game against an unranked team, enough Carolina fans were present to carry a loud "Tar"-"Heels" chant during two different timeouts. You have to have seen Wake at its best, to have seen their top-five clubs vanquish a pair of Tar Heel national champions earlier this century, to know how much those words echoing across the empty end zone sections must have galled those in black and gold.
Had some other fan bases pulled that trick, we'd be reading about it for years. But it's Carolina, so it is expected.
The particulars of Tuesday's game--Tyler Zeller had a career-high 18 rebounds, continuing his torrid pace, or Wake's failure to score a single point off turnovers, or Reggie Bullock's solid defense on C.J. Harris--take an immediate backseat to the status of Harrison Barnes's left ankle. He had the injury, which he said occurred during a simple jog downcourt, wrapped after the game.
"It feels numb," Barnes said. "We'll have to see how it feels tomorrow."
Thanks to the 9 p.m. start, tomorrow was already closer than anyone wanted to admit. Scarce minutes after it ended, it was already time to start turning the page on the 15-point win. Before that could happen, though, someone had to decide exactly what should be taken from that kind of victory.
"It's a win," Kendall Marshall said. "No matter what else it is, it's a win."
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.
