Lucas: Getting Better

By Adam Lucas

You can have your favorite play from Saturday's scintillating comeback over Miami. Luke Maye hit a game-tying three-pointer. Pick any one of Coby White's seven three-pointers. Way back in the first half, back when we all had less gray hair and Saturday was supposed to be a pleasant diversion instead of a cardiac emergency, Nassir Little fed Cameron Johnson, who threw a gorgeous touch pass to Luke Maye for a two-handed dunk through contact.

All of those were great plays. But they weren't my favorite. You can have yours, and reasonable people can disagree. But this is the best seven seconds from Saturday afternoon:

With three minutes left in overtime, Miami's Anthony Lawrence scored on a drive to the basket that gave the Hurricanes a 79-77 lead. It was an impressive drive, and there might have been some contact, and Lawrence took a moment to pound his chest, chirp at the officials, and celebrate the basket.

This is not an exaggeration. It truly was a moment. It was not even a full second. Blink your eyes. That's about how long Lawrence hesitated before getting back on defense.

It was all Coby White needed.

The freshman point guard took the inbounds pass from Luke Maye, jetted up the court, and fed Garrison Brooks for a game-tying dunk.

Lawrence scored with 3:00 on the clock. Brooks' dunk was through the net with 2:53 left. It took exactly seven seconds for the entire game to turn around. In less time than it takes for a winning rodeo ride, Miami went from up two and feeling good to tied and demoralized.

That's what Coby White does to you—and it should be noted that his push up the court in that situation was not even top White jet speed. It was a couple notches down from blazing, and was very nearly almost human. If you timed it, just the basic dribbling with the ball, it wouldn't have been as remarkable as some of his other dashes.

But the instincts—for Maye to instantly throw it in, for White to realize it was time to push the ball, for his teammates to have learned over the last couple months that it's imperative to run with him rather than just watch him, and for White (again) to understand when the situation is right to push the ball the full 94 feet—simply can't be taught.

And that's why you don't make your list of the best freshmen in college basketball in December. Or January. Or even today, on February 9, when he scored 33 points, matching his career high from the Texas game in November. Because if White keeps playing the way he did Saturday, he'll be on that list in March and April, which is the only time that matters.

You know what's amazing? He's getting better. He was good last summer, back when current and former players alike were buzzing about a freshman from Goldsboro who was an unstoppable offensive dynamo in summer pickup games. But White is better in February than he was in January, and he was miles better in January than he was in December, and White's December form was significantly better than his summer basketball. It's almost as though coaching--and being coachable--helps.

"I feel way more comfortable," White said of running the show on Saturday as compared to even a month ago. "It's been a whole lot of practice time. We practice those late game situations every day in practice. Coach believes in me. The team believes in me. I believe in myself, and I have a lot of confidence right now."

Coby, if this helps you—I believe in you, too. I firmly believe that every single time the ball leaves your hand, it's going straight through the net. It doesn't matter if you're pivoting away from a defender, or pulling up, or a couple feet beyond the three-point line—all of which he did in the second half—it just looks good every single time.

And in games like Saturday, as we are all well aware, what we do matters. That was one of the most Dean Smith-type comebacks of the Roy Williams era, so much so that with 7:30 remaining and the Canes holding an inexplicable 61-54 lead, you could almost hear Smith's voice echoing through his building:

"Wouldn't it be fun," he used to ask his teams in just that situation, "to come back and win this one?"

Yes, Coach, it was. It was a game Carolina had no business winning, a game in which they were somehow outrebounded by seven against a team they had dominated in Coral Gables, a game in which Chris Lykes was everything short of Coby White—which is to say, spectacular—and a game in which a Miami team hungry for a break looked like they might finally get one.

Which just made it so much more fun. It was a go where you go, do what you do type of Saturday. We all do it. Whether you admit it or not, you do it.

The first thing my younger son said to me after the game: "I don't want to take full credit for that win, but right before Luke hit that shot that tied it, I tied my shoe a different way."

This made sense to me, because I had started a different page in my notebook, because the page I had been using was causing the Tar Heels to lose. My bad, folks.

Former Tar Heel Mike Copeland: "I came to the Miami game last year. When we were down, I was really worried it was me."

Look, America is a fractured place and there are lots of dissenting opinions, but I think we can all 100 percent agree on this: if Carolina hosts Miami next year, Mike Copeland is not invited.

We all realize, though, that no matter how you tie your shoes and no matter what page you write on, there is one indisputable fact: it really, really helps if Coby White is on your team.

With 12.3 seconds left and Carolina holding a three-point lead courtesy of a pair of big Cameron Johnson free throws, Miami and the Tar Heels called back-to-back timeouts. When the Carolina players came back on the court, there were three seniors (Johnson, Luke Maye and Kenny Williams), a junior (Brandon Robinson) and a freshman (White).

As they gathered near midcourt, arms around each other, who do you think was talking? Final seconds of overtime, ACC game, experience is paramount, and you need someone to get the last words to his teammates…

It was White.

"If we get one stop, we win the game and we go home," he told the other four Tar Heels. "We've got to have toughness. Get a stop. We have no timeouts left. If we get the ball, don't call timeout. Hold the ball and let them foul you."

That's some impressively mature leadership from a freshman—or from anyone, for that matter. Sure, he was largely repeating what the Carolina coaches had said during the timeout. But he understood it. And the fact is that at that moment, in that game, in that situation, it was White who was talking, and everyone wearing blue and white argyle was listening.

Maybe it will be someone else next time. But Saturday, it was White. Think of all the great Carolina freshmen. You might not see it mentioned very regularly on television, but the Tar Heels have had some incredibly talented—and productive—freshmen over these last 45 years of freshman eligibility.

White is the first of any of them to score at least 33 points twice in one season. He was reclined in the locker room in the immediate minutes after the game, and if you didn't know any better, you might have thought he almost looked like a normal college kid.

But he is not normal. He is Coby White, which then became obvious when he described the game we had all just watched. The words he chose were exactly what all 21,383 of us had thought at some point in the last two hours.

"Every time it left my hand," White said, "it felt like it was going in."

Players Mentioned

Garrison Brooks

Cameron Johnson

Nassir Little

Luke Maye

Brandon Robinson

Coby White

Kenny Williams

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