University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Coming Back
January 11, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
You know and I know that George Lynch had the big steal and dunk against Florida State in 1993, and Marvin Williams made the shot against Duke in 2005, and Ty Lawson sank the buzzer-beater at Florida State in 2009.
And now, of course, there is Marcus Paige (again), who drove the lane (again) and somehow went through a defense that knew he was getting the ball (again) and made the game-winner for the Tar Heels (again).
So put him on the list, with George and Marvin and Ty.
But right here, somewhere in close proximity to that list, we should also record these things:
Henrik Rodl started the comeback against the Seminoles with a key three-pointer.
David Noel had a huge steal at midcourt against the Blue Devils.
Danny Green made a steal and three-point play at FSU.
And the Tar Heel bench outscored the Cardinal bench 20 to zero—twenty to zero—in a one-point game.
What usually happens after these comebacks is that the other side walks away wondering how that happened. Pat Kennedy memorably said after Carolina's 1993 win that just that afternoon he'd been paging through the UNC media guide, marveling at the Tar Heel history of comebacks. On Saturday afternoon, staring at the wrong end of a how-did-they-do-that 72-71 loss, Rick Pitino, who has now coached 950 college basketball games in his career, said, “It stings as much as any game I've ever coached.”
That's what Carolina does to you. And here's how they do it: with the entire team. With a 20-0 edge in bench points in a game that they trailed by 13 points with 8:43 left and by nine points with 6:11 left.
“Their starting five played a lot,” said Nate Britt. “We knew they would log a lot of minutes. We're such a deep team. Our bench contributes and there's no let-off. We like to be aggressive on defense and run on offense, and to play a whole game in that type of fashion it's very important for our bench to play the way they did today.”
Tar Heel reserves played 71 minutes. The Louisville bench played 30. Those big numbers don't really tell the story, though. What tells the story are little moments like the one with under three minutes remaining, when Roy Williams suddenly put Desmond Hubert in the game. That's senior Desmond Hubert, one of the guys on the front of the media guide, who hadn't played all afternoon. Suddenly here came Hubert for one reason and one reason only—to play defense.
He bodied up Tarboro native Montrezl Harrell in the lane, and the Cardinals—undoubtedly trying to take advantage of a perceived mismatch against a Tar Heel reserve—fed Harrell almost immediately.
But Hubert was in the game for exactly one reason: he is Carolina's best post defender. In these 35 seconds, he gave the Tar Heels the best chance to stop Louisville. And he pushed Harrell perhaps a step further out than the Louisville big man wanted, and he stayed strong when Harrell swooped across the lane for a hook shot, pushing him out to the ACC logo rather than closer to the rim. The shot missed, Justin Jackson rebounded, and Williams called timeout to make an offensive-defensive substitution.
Hubert was in the game for 22 seconds on that possession. He did exactly what he was supposed to do. That's how a team comes back. That's how a team wins.
It's up to the players like Hubert and his fellow reserves to get the game to the point that the players best suited to win the game can go out and…well…win the game. A few minutes earlier, Paige had left the floor with a tweaked ankle. He's been battling foot problems for over a week and hasn't been full speed in practice.
In a back hallway of the Smith Center, Tar Heel trainer Doug Halverson had retaped Paige's ankle. Then, Halverson had some more tests he wanted to perform. He needed to see Paige move laterally, needed to see him jump up and down, needed to make sure he was OK to go back in the game.
Through the hall came the muffled noises of the Smith Center crowd of 21,750, groaning with every missed shot and roaring with every basket. Even minus Paige, the Tar Heels had trimmed two points off what had been a 10-point Louisville lead, but the clock was under eight minutes and the situation was looking dicey.
“Let me see you move, Marcus,” said Halverson, who was doing his job.
“I'm good,” said Paige as he sprinted back down the hallway to the UNC tunnel.
Even after he returned, his head coach was returned. Britt shot a pair of free throws with 4:39 left. As he toed the line, Williams stepped onto the court and put his arm around Paige.
“Are you OK?” he asked the junior. “Can you go?”
“I'm good,” Paige replied. “I'll be all right.”
Paige was asked later what would have needed to occur for him to leave the floor at that moment. “If my body was not in one piece,” he said, “I would've told him I needed to step out for a second.”
So Paige was back on the floor at the end, of course. Carolina took a 70-69 lead with 36.5 seconds remaining on a Brice Johnson basket. You look over at the UNC sideline and there is Roy Williams, as expected, crouched and begging for a defensive stop.
But look a few feet to Williams' right. There, as perhaps not expected, is freshman Theo Pinson, in a crouch every bit as deep, begging every bit as hard for a defensive stop.
“I was so nervous,” Pinson said. “I've never been that nervous playing basketball in my life.”
Hey, Theo, we understand.
Pinson played just 15 minutes and took just two shots in the very next game after having a terrific outing against Notre Dame. And yet he was the first one bouncing onto the court at every timeout, the one waving a towel on the bench, the one crouching and asking for defense.
You need the Marcus Paiges to make those shots. But you also need the Theo Pinsons to make those moments possible.
“I honestly cherish when my teammates do well,” Pinson said. Yes, he really said that.
“That's what we do,” Paige said. “We do a lot through sharing the ball and cutting and screening. It's important for us to get contributions from everybody.”
In true Dean Smith fashion, Paige then went on to single out four different reserves, including a Joel James and-one with 11:31 remaining that absolutely no one remembered in the wake of Paige's buzzer-beater…other than the man who made the buzzer-beater.
And when you make plays like that, when you have a team that commits to a complete effort like that, you get moments like this one.
The Tar Heels had sprinted to the locker room, eagerly awaiting the postgame “Jump Around” celebration that is a Williams trademark. But ESPN had grabbed Williams for an on-court interview, delaying his return for several minutes.
“We were waiting for what seemed like ten minutes,” Pinson said. “And then he came around the corner, and he gave us a look. He gave a little step, and then he slowed down and said, 'I'm going to calm down.'”
And then?
“Then he went crazy.”
Pinson almost giggled as he recounted his coach going crazy. And then he said exactly what thousands of other Tar Heel fans said as they drove home, or as they called their craziest Tar Heel buddy, or as they asked their ecstatic Tar Heel ballboy son what his afternoon had been like.
“I'm going to remember this the rest of my life,” Pinson said. “You just won't understand it until you're part of it. It's a feeling you dream about.”
