University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Sealed With A Kiss
March 10, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
March 10, 2012
By Adam Lucas
ATLANTA--It's a measure of just how even-keeled Justin Watts can be that his head coach planted a kiss on him during Saturday's ACC Tournament semifinal win over NC State and Watts barely raised an eyebrow.
"It's not the first time," Watts said matter-of-factly after the 69-67 win, a game that for just one moment brought back a little bit of the heart-pounding intensity of the ACC Tournament of yore.
As it turns out, Williams had similarly saluted his senior after the road win at Miami, when Watts made several key plays in a Tar Heel road win. This time, all he did was play point guard and power forward in the same game, draw a fourth foul on State star C.J. Leslie by picking up a charge, play just tough enough defense to force a Wolfpack giveaway with 42.6 seconds remaining, and then slide over to pick up a game-sealing steal with seconds remaining, followed by flinging the ball over his head to melt a couple extra seconds off the clock.
It's so very Justin Watts that of all those contributions to the victory, only one of them goes in his column on the stat sheet--the steal in the closing seconds with Carolina holding a 69-67 advantage. That's the play that prompted the kiss from Williams in the huddle.
"J Watts probably made the biggest play of the game," Williams said. "We had new assignments as to who was guarding who, and we had a mix-up. (DeShawn) Painter was underneath the basket wide open and I was screaming to go get him. It was not J Watts's man. He went sprinting down there and saved us because they were throwing it to Painter for a layup."
In the huddle after Watts's save and heave, which ran the clock down to 1.2 seconds, Williams informed Harrison Barnes that Watts had "saved his bacon."
"My man was DeShawn Painter," Barnes said. "He was running downcourt doing jumping jacks and push-ups and dancing for the ball down there. I was messing around with Lorenzo Brown trying to double-team with Kendall. Justin made a great play and was very basketball savvy and threw the ball way downcourt."
Watts and Reggie Bullock, in fact, were virtually the only two Tar Heels back on defense on that decisive defensive play. Bullock was on Scott Wood, an image Wood probably sees in his nightmares. But Wood also had an easy passing lane to Painter...until Watts slid in front of him.
The play still wasn't finished. The play still could have been disastrous. Watts had to leap to make the interception, taking him out of bounds. If he tries to throw the ball off Painter and misses, it's freely bouncing around beneath the Pack basket, with three State players honing in on it. But Watts is a senior, and he's heard his head coach preach the same message in practice for four years:
"Hundreds and hundreds of times, Coach has told us to use our brain when we're playing," Watts said. "And I knew not to throw it under their goal. So I tried to throw it way down under our goal...I was hoping it would come down with zeroes on the clock."
It sounds easy when he says it. But if he'd made almost any other decision, the final seconds could have unfolded very differently.
It's difficult to measure things like respect and leadership, although both intangibles are frequent topics among fans. One way to gauge them is this: when a player succeeds, how happy are his teammates for him? In the glow of Saturday's win, Watts's teammates were ecstatic.
"Justin's performance tonight put us over the top," Barnes said. "It was all the little things he did. He didn't score 20 points or anything like that. But his little contributions, his stepping up and being the glue guy, helped us win."
Glue guy almost implies doing some of the unnecessary tasks that take a team from good to great. That's not what Watts did in Atlanta. Every single play he made was absolutely essential to the victory. It's pretty simple: without Justin Watts--he of the two-point boxscore--Carolina doesn't win the game. Someone was needed to play the post because of John Henson's absence: Watts did that. Someone was needed to play point guard for the final 4:50 in the first half when Kendall Marshall picked up two fouls: Watts did that, and the Tar Heels were +2 during that stretch. On a day when the roster was so depleted that Henson and Leslie McDonald were relegated to the second row of the bench beside manager Kelly Dean, the Tar Heels needed someone to not just play one role, but play every single role he was asked to play, no matter how divergent they might be: Watts did that.
His teammates noticed. Tyler Zeller scored 23 points, grabbed 9 rebounds and has spent the past month basically filling a UHaul with every award he can find. After the game, he wanted to talk about Justin Watts.
"Justin is one of those players I love to see succeed," Zeller said. "He does a great job every day in practice. Seeing him make plays like tonight is incredible. He doesn't get the recognition I think he deserves."
Earlier this year, James Michael McAdoo called Watts "one of the best teammates I've ever had." What is it that inspires that type of dedication among his teammates?
His fellow senior, Zeller, didn't even have to think about it. "He doesn't play a lot, and he still comes to practice every day talking and into it," Zeller said. "Behind the scenes, he's always trying to help us get ready for games. He's fun to be around and a great teammate."
So this was Watts's moment. He met the media looking every bit the businessman, with his tie already neatly knotted over his gold shirt. He did a national radio interview, a big step for a player who is not typically excited about media opportunities. And when given the chance to talk about himself, to thump his chest a little about a game-saving play, this is what he said:
"I happened to make some big plays, but I didn't do it by myself. My teammates are out there, too. Kendall made a big shot to give us the lead. I just want to thank them for making me look good."
That's the kind of team-first sentiment that makes a head coach proud. And maybe even want to hand out a kiss or two.
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.
