Lucas: Through The Wringer

By Adam Lucas

RALEIGH—You can tell a lot about Luke Maye by his scoring. The Carolina senior had a team-high 21 points in the 90-82 win over NCSU on Tuesday night, and he got his points from all over the court—a pair of three-pointers, a couple post moves, a couple drives (and don't forget his 7-for-8 from the free throw line).

You can tell a lot about Luke Maye by his rebounding. He tied for the team high with 11 rebounds, two of which were offensive.

You can tell a lot about Luke Maye by the way the crowd responds to him. The sellout crowd at PNC Arena booed him from the start, and with good reason. In his last two games at State, he's scored 54 points and grabbed 28 rebounds. Or maybe they just all really appreciate a great effort and are chanting, "Luuuuuuuuke"…nah, that's probably not it.

All of these are great ways to learn a little bit about Carolina's standout senior. The most telling thing he did on Tuesday, however, can't be found on the stat sheet. With approximately twelve minutes left in the game, Cameron Johnson went down in severe pain in front of Kevin Keatts, who had evidently had Sidney Lowe's red jacket taken in a little. Johnson had to be helped off the floor, and the game continued, with Carolina clinging to a four-point lead.

By the time there was a stoppage with just over six minutes left, the Tar Heels had stretched the advantage back to 77-69. Roy Williams gathered his team around him and gave them some important instructions for the game's closing minutes. As the players returned to the court, Maye slipped down to the end of the bench and found athletic trainer Doug Halverson.

"Is Cam OK?" he asked.

Halverson confirmed that Maye's roommate was merely the victim of bad cramping. Suitably assured, Maye proceeded to get four more points and three more rebounds over the remainder of the game, sealing his perfect 4-0 record in Raleigh against the Pack. Overall, the Tar Heels have now won six in a row against State in PNC Arena, meaning that three different four-year classes of NCSU students have now waited in long lines for tickets, made signs disparaging Carolina that were shown on the video board during pregame, loudly belted out, "Go to hell Carolina!" during the singing of the State fight song, and never seen their team beat the Tar Heels in their own arena.

Maye and Kenny Williams have four wins each in PNC Arena; the Wolfpack program has four wins against Carolina in the entire lifespan of the building since it was constructed for the 1999-2000 season.

Is this gloating? If it is, it's only because they make it so darn fun. Affixed to the door outside the Carolina locker room was a sign that read "UNC-Chapel Hill Players," as though there had been some question about whether Wes Miller might be bringing UNC-Greensboro to town (Miller's Spartans won, 81-76, in Raleigh last season and, perhaps not coincidentally, are not on the schedule this year). How much does Roy Williams enjoy beating the Pack? In the immediate aftermath of Saturday's win at Pitt, still in the locker room at the Petersen Events Center, he was already reminding his players of the next opponent and the importance of winning in Raleigh.

Maye taking the time to check on a teammate during a hotly contested ACC game was a nice reminder of exactly why it's so much fun to be a Tar Heel in this era of college basketball. Give me seniors…no, that's not exactly it. Give me seniors who care, and I'll show you a pretty good team. Find me seniors who are worried about someone other than themselves in front of 19,000 furious Wolfpack fans, and I'll show you a team with some potential. Kenny Williams hadn't shot the ball well and had nine rebounds in his last three games. All he did was score 15 points and get ten rebounds, all while providing the calming on-court influence needed by a Carolina team forced to use some unusual combinations.

Maybe Brandon Robinson makes a key three-pointer even if Williams isn't constantly reminding him to be calm. Maybe Leaky Black scores four points even without Williams' influence. Luckily, we don't have to find out.

"No matter how loud the crowd got, I wanted to tell them we're still good," Kenny Williams said of his message to his less experienced teammates. "Focus on us. We'll come back from it. They're going to get loud, they're going to hit shots, they're going to go on runs. It's about how we respond to it."

It mattered that Carolina had been in this environment before. Tuesday was the fifth true road game of the season. Some have gone well—wins at Wofford and Elon—and some were debacles (Michigan). But aren't you glad right now that the Tar Heels already had that experience of playing in Ann Arbor before conference play began?

Maye said his message to his teammates was simple: "Just play." Don't worry about the angry crowd, just play. The NCSU bench outscored Carolina 35-0 in the first half. In the second half, the Tar Heel reserves had a 9-8 advantage.

In the course of the Roy Williams era, Carolina has won games in Raleigh with a single star going supernova, as with Marcus Paige in 2014. They've won games by blowouts (2017) and by a basket (2015). And this one, they won with a little bit of everybody, with three seniors posting double-doubles and everyone else contributing just enough at just the right time, whether it was Coby White jetting down the court after a made State basket to demoralize them with a lightning-fast layup, or Black knocking down a steely jumper near the top of the key in the second half, or Garrison Brooks handing out five assists for the second straight game.

And the youngsters, they're learning by watching the veterans. "This was a different kind of game," Black said of the atmosphere. "I could feel the vibrations in my chest. The older guys kept telling us to keep our composure."

Those older guys will never play another game in PNC Arena. They'll undoubtedly miss it. But the hope is their lessons make an impact on the next trip to Raleigh, that maybe in 2020 Black or Robinson or Brooks might think back to what they learned from those old guys on previous teams. Rivals make runs. Key players might get hurt and you might have to play the final ten minutes without your leading scorer. The game continues.

"The fact that we've been there before made a world of difference in this game," Kenny Williams said. "Teams have gone on runs against us before. It's not uncharted territory. We've got three seniors who have been through the wringer. We know what it takes to win games like this."

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Leaky Black

Garrison Brooks

Cameron Johnson

Luke Maye

Brandon Robinson

Coby White

Kenny Williams

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