University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: Prizefight
March 13, 2016 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
Before Saturday night's ACC Tournament championship game with Virginia, Roy Williams invoked one of the greatest rivalries in sports history. “Coach talked about the fight between Ali and Frazier,” Justin Jackson said, referring to the boxing matches between the heavyweight titans of the 1970s. Those three fights, which were nicknamed The Fight of The Century, Super Fight II and The Thrilla in Manila, went a combined 41 rounds, with neither fighter giving an inch. Jackson said he hadn't seen highlights of the fights, but he knew what Williams was trying to get across. “By the end of the fight, none of them had anything left,” the Tar Heel sophomore said. “For this game, that's what we were trying to do, put everything on the line and not have to say what if we would have done this or that.”
With higher seeds prevailing in 12 of the 13 games that made up the 2016 ACC Tournament going to the higher seeds (the lone exception being #10 Georgia Tech's upset of #7 Clemson), the week was building to this: top-seeded Carolina vs. second-seeded Virginia. The ACC regular season champions against the team that handed them a four-point loss in their lone regular-season meeting.
And what a prizefight it was. The teams traded body blows from the tip-off, with seven minutes and 57 seconds elapsing before an official stoppage. “When we missed that first TV timeout, I was about to pass out,” Marcus Paige would say later. It was 9-9 at that point, but Carolina had already committed five turnovers, and Virginia had turned those into five points.
One of the nation's most disciplined teams, Virginia runs Tony Bennett's system to perfection. They are patient on offense, taking their time to find good shots. “They don't just slow the game down to make it ugly,” Paige said, “they slow it down because they're really effective at doing that.”
On defense, Virginia packs a man-to-man defense inside the three-point arc, and bring surprise double-teams to force turnovers. And the Cavaliers are perfectly content to let you try to rush. “When we speed up on offense, we take the shots they want us to take,” Isaiah Hicks said. “Quick three, turn the ball over in a double team, that stuff when we try to rush. So if they're playing that, you might as well take your time, get a great shot because . . . it's going to be a low-possession game.”
The hits kept coming midway through the first half, when Virginia pushed the lead to six. “It's frustrating,” Nate Britt said of having to adjust to the Cavaliers. “We want to run, and they used the full shot clock every single possession. It's tiring on us, especially because (ACC Player of the Year Malcolm) Brogdon and (London) Perrantes, all of their guards run off screens the entire 30 seconds of the shot clock, so that wears us down. And whenever there's a small slip-up, then they hit a shot or they score. It's hard for us to be able to do that on the defensive end and then still try to push the tempo on the offensive end.” But late in the first half, Carolina accepted the tempo and began to play within themselves. Getting tough defensively and playing the full possession forced out-of-rhythm Virginia shots and rebound opportunities for the Heels. A late run tied the score at 28 at intermission.
“We finally sat down and played defense and when we did that we made everything hard,” Jackson said. “They still hit shots because they're still great players, but at the end of the day we made everything hard for them.”
Jackson didn't hear it, but Tony Bennett had said the same in his post-game press conference. “They made it hard for us,” he said. Later, he added, “We got stuck at the end of the shot clock and had to force some plays. But you have to in that spot. We were a little stagnant at times. That's partly on us and partly to how hard they played and got after us.”
Virginia scored the first four points of the second half and led much of that stanza. Even when the Tar Heels took the lead eight minutes in, Evan Nolte answered with a three almost immediately. After that, however, Virginia missed 14 of their next 15 field goal attempts. The Tar Heels were moving their feet on defense, and were quite literally beating Virginia at their own game. A Joel Berry shot untied a 44-44 game.
Then, Jackson, who'd been quiet all night, made two of the game's biggest plays. He grabbed an offensive rebound on a Paige three-point attempt that rattled out, putting in a reverse lead to make the lead four. Seventy seconds later, after a Berry three put the Tar Heels up five, Jackson stepped in front of a Devon Hall pass, raced down the court and dunked the ball. The lead was seven. Timeout Virginia. “Two of the biggest plays you can have for a guy that only scores six in the entire game,” Roy Williams said of Jackson.
Carolina eventually led by as many as nine before three late threes by the Cavaliers made it a one-possession game with two seconds to play. But Berry, who made four free throws in the final 15 seconds, put it away. The bell rang, and the champs were crowned. They'd won the prizefight. Three days. Three games. Three wins. ACC regular season and tournament champions.
“I think we really showed everybody who says we weren't tough enough,” Jackson said. “I think we proved them wrong. These last three games. I don't know how you could possibly say that we're too soft or we're not tough enough anymore. But we're not even worried about that. We're trying to play for each other and we're going to enjoy this for a little while, and then get ready for the next one.”
On to the next one. On to the next prizefight.
Turner Walston is the editor of CAROLINA digital magazine. Follow Turner on Twitter.
