University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Definition
February 18, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
And now comes an opportunity.
That's the only possible way to look at an otherwise soul-crushing loss to Duke on Wednesday night.
This one was supposed to be different. This time was our time. This time Carolina had seniors—important seniors who are major contributors, and a team full of experience, which almost never happens in today's college basketball—and Duke had…well, Duke had Grayson Allen and Brandon Ingram and some other guys. Oh, and they also have a 74-73 victory, the most improbable Blue Devil win in the series since Roy Williams returned to Chapel Hill.
It is February 18 and we are at the crossroads of the 2015-16 season. It's that simple.
There will be plenty of talk in the coming days about all the things Carolina is not. The Tar Heels had a 68-60 lead at home against Duke and couldn't hold it. They had Brice Johnson with 29 points and 19 rebounds but got him just two shots in the final 17 minutes of the game, and no shots in the final 4:45.
There was a disastrous end-game sequence. The final 18 seconds will be replayed often, but the final 90 seconds were a meltdown. There was a turnover by the senior leader. A scattered possession that ended with a hurried shot that never made it to the rim. Another scattered possession that ended with a hurried shot that never made it to the rim.
And then, Duke celebrating on the Smith Center court. They were hugging and screaming and celebrating and it was a terrible thing for 21,750 people to have to watch, but all you could do was stare. Twenty minutes after the game was over, there were still fans slumped in their seats.
Right now, at this moment, those are the defining images of the 2015-16 Tar Heels. They were the nation's preseason number-one team. They are in first place in the Atlantic Coast Conference with five games remaining. And yet, after tonight, virtually everyone will be writing the postmortem on this season. Not tough enough. Can't finish. Not elite.
Therein lies the opportunity. Because, you see, there are still six weeks left.
This game immediately goes on the list with the Austin Rivers game as games about which we should never have to speak again. But the Rivers game didn't end the 2012 season. That group went over to Durham a few weeks later and pummeled the Devils, then was a Kendall Marshall injury away from making a Final Four run.
No one thinks about the 2012 Carolina season and thinks about Austin Rivers, unless they're trying to make themselves miserable. That team was more than just the Rivers game, because that's what they chose to be. The task now becomes making sure this game doesn't become the most telling image of the 2016 Tar Heels.
Can they do it? I don't know. There are flaws, certainly. The Tar Heels shot 1-for-13 from three-point range against Duke and are simply not very consistent from the perimeter. They essentially forgot about one of their two best players in the closing minutes of a tight game. Sometimes they do not defend.
And they still have six weeks left to be whatever they decide they want to be. Maybe the above description is apt. Maybe it's not. There are enough quality opponents left on the schedule that even with this loss, Carolina still very much has the chance to define the season.
Roy Williams was candid after the game. “I should've called a timeout,” he said, echoing what you were probably yelling at your television.
But let's go back instead to his comments after the 2012 game.
“You ought to be ticked off,” he said. “You ought to be flat out ticked off. You're going to become more determined. If you start wallowing in sorrow for yourself or feeling sorry for yourself, you should just go home…We lost a game we could've won. If we don't learn something from that and come back more determined, I've got the wrong group. And I don't think I have the wrong group. We're going to come back and go to work.”
