Lucas: Vintage

By Adam Lucas

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas--In the immediate aftermath of Carolina's improbable 78-74 victory over Oregon in the Battle 4 Atlantis, Cole Anthony was sprawled flat on his back on a treatment table in the makeshift Tar Heel locker room.

He was mostly alone in the room, his right shoe was off, and athletic trainer Madison Corona had wrapped his right ankle. He had his cell phone in his right hand, and he was scrolling through Twitter when he came upon a highlight clip from the game he had just played. The clip, of course, was the 6-foot-3 Anthony rising above the rim to reject a dunk attempt by Oregon's 6-foot-7 Shakur Juiston. "This was on SportsCenter?" he asked. He watched it once. Raised his eyebrow. Went back and watched it again.

It was no less remarkable in the small dimensions of his phone's screen than it was in real time approximately an hour earlier. "That felt like vintage Cole Anthony right there," Anthony said. "It felt like I was in my prime again. I've got these busted up ankles, my knees haven't been working right, but that felt like I was getting my juice back, like Uncle Drew."

For the record, Cole Anthony was born on May 15, 2000. He has not yet even approached his prime. But he was indisputably correct about one very important thing: that was vintage. Not just vintage Anthony, but vintage Carolina basketball.

Even Anthony, who has a better than average grasp of what it means to have a Tar Heel basketball pedigree, probably doesn't fully appreciate how many times we have seen this script. Coming off a potentially demoralizing defeat and saddled with multiple injuries and significant foul trouble, Carolina somehow pieced together 40 minutes of the best victory of the year so far.

This is exactly what makes Carolina basketball, Carolina basketball. The Tar Heels play in the big games, yes. But it's these types of games, these November battles with the family in town to gather around the television and the Tar Heels playing at some odd start time, that build tradition. King Rice beat James Madison and Joseph Forte torched the Maui Invitational and Ty Lawson and Deon Thompson ditched the headbands against Tennessee and Marcus Paige was sensational against Louisville. None of those games won anything banner-worthy. But they built the Carolina basketball that we know, the program that alternately exasperates us and thrills us but that remains the very best part of some of these holiday weekends.

Somehow, the Tar Heels win these games. Somehow, the Tar Heels have Jeremiah Francis and Sterling Manley and Anthony Harris injured on the bench, where they are joined by Leaky Black after just eight minutes and 34 seconds, and even senior Brandon Robinson for a couple brief nervous minutes in the second half. Somehow, even with those depleted numbers and with Garrison Brooks playing through a painful-looking scratched cornea, the Tar Heels managed to amass five different players with three fouls with over 11 minutes left in the game--Brooks, Robinson, Anthony, Justin Pierce, and Armando Bacot. And that is how, over the final ten minutes of the game, Roy Williams received meaningful minutes from K.J. Smith, Brandon Huffman, Christian Keeling and Andrew Platek, getting just enough stops and just enough scores to topple the No. 11 Ducks. Williams is in the Hall of Fame, and Friday was a nice reminder of why.

"It was our third game in three days," Smith said. "We had guys wounded and hurt. But we battled. We knew the tougher team would win and that's what we were tonight. Everybody competed and everyone who stepped on the floor stepped up."

The peak moment came when Smith drove the length of the floor, in quintessential Baby Jet style, and dropped a perfect bounce pass to Bacot--who had been so important protecting the rim defensively all afternoon--for a two-handed dunk that gave Carolina a 70-60 lead with five minutes left. Not long after that play, separated by media obligations, they were FaceTiming each other to make postgame plans for a celebratory evening.

Postgame locker rooms are fun when one player gets hot, as Anthony did against Notre Dame in the season opener. But they are even better when everyone does something to contribute to the victory. The Carolina celebration was so loud it echoed up and down a back hallway at the Atlantis resort, as all 11 players who saw action could reasonably feel they did something to help the Tar Heels win. Even when Roy Williams finished addressing the team, players and coaches lingered, reminding each other of one more big moment or one more key play.

Anthony just chuckled when asked if he knew he was going to cleanly block Juiston's dunk. "Oh yeah," he said with the confidence of a 19-year-old who finds it fairly commonplace to casually click "retweet" on ESPN tweets about himself. "I don't go for blocks that I can't get."

Normal programs don't win these types of games, not with this type of adversity against this type of opponent. The fact that Carolina routinely does is not something that should be taken for granted, because then it would cease to be so much darn fun. The roots of this particular improbable win were planted on Thanksgiving night in a team meeting and in the constantly pinging team group chat.

"We talked about it last night, and Coach talked to us about it today," Anthony said. "That feeling of losing is a feeling no one wants to experience. We didn't want that feeling again. We wanted that winning feeling that Carolina is so used to."

Names change, the background evolves. Rice didn't get to watch highlights of his game-winner on his cell phone and Forte didn't FaceTime his teammates to make postgame plans while they waited for postgame interviews. But everything else about this afternoon seemed awfully familiar.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Armando Bacot

Leaky Black

Garrison Brooks

Jeremiah Francis

Anthony Harris

Brandon Huffman

Christian Keeling

Sterling Manley

Justin Pierce

Andrew Platek

Brandon Robinson

K.J. Smith

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