University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: The Fight
February 25, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
Sometimes, in attempting to discern a team's identity, to take its temperature, so to speak, I find it helpful to examine its play on a micro level. A columnist can write about a game in its entirety, or a stellar performance from a standout player, but on occasion, I enjoy breaking things down even more, to a single play.
This column is about a single play from Carolina's win over Louisville on Wednesday. But it's not a deep Justin Jackson three-pointer, or a Theo Pinson dipsy-doo lay-up (though that did make me gasp on press row) or a Kennedy Meeks block. This column is about a defensive rebound, one that made me burst into a grin.
That single rebound is completely unremarkable in the box score, though that doesn't tell the whole story. The official play by play of the sequence I'm referring to reads as such:
01:07 MISSED 3 PTR by Snider, Quentin
REBOUND (DEF) by Joel Berry II
That's what made me grin. Mundane, right? But its significance goes well beyond those two lines. Let's back up a little bit, rewind to the sloppy beginning of the game. Wednesday's game was a meeting between two teams who like to run, and their engines were hot from the tip. Neither team scored for the first 106 seconds. Carolina didn't get on the board until nearly three minutes had passed. In the first half, the Tar Heels made just 12 field goal attempts and yet somehow took a three-point lead into intermission.
Sometimes it was ugly, and sometimes it was beautiful. It was fun. And if you were under the impression that neither team ran much in the way of half-court offense, you're right.
"It was no offense, honestly," Tar Heel point guard Joel Berry said after the game. "We wanted to run it, but it was just two teams that love the fast pace, and I'm not going to lie to you, the first couple of minutes I was dog tired, because it was just going back and forth, shot after shot, turnover . . . It was fast-paced, but that's what our teams are."
Carolina found its rhythm in the second half. Justin Jackson scored 11 of his 21 points after the break, and the Tar Heels used a 13-3 run to take a lead they would not relinquish.
After the under-four media timeout in the second half, the game ground to a crawl. Louisville committed seven fouls in those final four minutes, sending the Tar Heels to the free throw line and trying to shoot their way back into the game. Five different Tar Heels combined to go 10-13 from the line down the stretch.
And now we get to our single defensive rebound.
Nate Britt made two free throws with 1:16 remaining to put the Tar Heel lead at ten. A four-possession game, but not an insurmountable margin. And then, the above play happened. If you look back at the replay, you'll see Snider step back and shoot that three. Louisville is desperately trying to get back into the game. Justin Jackson contests the shot, and Berry knifes through the lane, leaps above Kennedy Meeks and hauls in the rebound. As Berry gathers himself, Meeks reaches out and gives his teammate a tap. You can't see it from the TV angle, but Meeks is smiling and shouting words of encouragement.
That's it. That's what made me grin. Because the 6'0 Berry, who played 35 minutes (five more than his next-closest teammate) out-leaped the 6'10 Meeks to secure that defensive rebound. And Meeks is fired up to see his point guard go get the ball.
"I was just being aggressive to get the ball," Berry said. "I wanted to make sure we secured it. We were already up; it was late in the game and I didn't want them getting an offensive rebound. I know Kennedy had it, but I'm not sure, so when in doubt, I'd rather fight over it than not get it."
"I didn't think he was going to get the rebound over me, for sure, but he got it," Meeks said. "And that definitely, for us, sealed the deal, just because he's worked tremendously hard on the offensive end. For him to come in and get the defensive rebound and push the ball up the court is something that we look for."
It's what we look for, too, those of us who root for the Tar Heels. We want to see that fight, want to see our guys do whatever it takes to secure a win. That rebound essentially sealed a win over a top ten opponent and put the Tar Heels in first place in the ACC race by two games, but it also exemplified the fight that these young men have shown to get there. And it's what they'll need to continue to display if they want to get back to the game's biggest stage.
