Lucas: A Chance

By Adam Lucas

CHARLOTTE—Deep breath, everyone.

It is miserable to lose. It is miserable to have the ball with a chance to win on the game's final play and fall short.

And of course, as we all know, it is miserable to lose to them.

But don't let the frustration over the source of the loss overshadow the total evaluation of where Carolina stands on March 16. You play the entire season to get to this point. And when the Tar Heels gather at Roy Williams' home on Sunday evening to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show, no matter who is in the bracket, no matter who the potential opponents might be, you will come away with the following feeling:

These Heels have a chance.

That's all you can ask. They have a chance partially because of what we saw Friday in Charlotte. We saw Carolina shoot 4-for-27 from the three-point line. We saw the Tar Heels miss a couple of big free throws. We saw a couple of unfortunate bounces and some foul trouble and a long cold spell.

And we saw Carolina with the ball and a chance to win on the final possession of the game, against a team that starts three NBA lottery picks and will most likely be given the nation's overall top seed on Sunday.

So, yes, the Tar Heels have a chance.

That's all you can wish for at this time of year. You don't get guarantees. Carolina is not such a potent squad—this is not 1984, or 1994, or 1998, or 2009, or 2012—that it would take an upset or an injury to keep them out of the Final Four (and those things happen, as you can tell by the fact that only two of those cited teams made it to the final weekend). Can they be beaten? Sure. But it will take an exceptional effort to do it.

Because the 2019 Tar Heels have a chance. They have seniors who make big plays, like Luke Maye posting another double-double against Duke. They have Roy Williams, the architect of this entire thing. They have talented rookies who are willing to take big shots. Coby White missed a potential game-winning jumper with seconds remaining and Nassir Little very nearly tipped it in. And if you told me, right now, that those two would get the exact same chance in three weeks in that same situation against that same opponent on a much bigger stage, I would take it.

That's how good this team can be. That's how good this team already is. You're used to it, because you've watched Carolina play more than any other team this season. What you're going to find out in the next few days and weeks is that Carolina's average performance is very, very good as compared to the national baseline. And when the Tar Heels are above average, they're excellent.

I am not a certified bracketologist, or even an uncertified bracketologist. Having watched the Tar Heels play every other team in the current national top-five, I am fully confident Carolina is, on balance, one of the best four teams in the country. That does not mean the Tar Heels will get a number-one seed. And if they don't, some other team will be very concerned that Carolina is in their region as the number-two. Remember--Carolina shot poorly, made some iffy decisions and suffered a couple of defensive lapses, and lost by one point to one of the best teams in the country.

Just like the previous two meetings, Friday's game was a stark reminder of how different these programs have become. They don't want to be us and we don't want to be them, and that's probably how it's supposed to be.

Duke came out for Thursday's quarterfinal game against Syracuse sporting white long-sleeve warmup shirts with "Family" emblazoned across the chest. Perhaps realizing that might be a slightly awkward look in a semifinal matchup with the program that made the word more of a fundamental belief than a recruiting pitch, the Blue Devils arrived Friday instead wearing gray warmup shirts featuring their Brotherhood logo, a graphic for which they embarked on a very specific "branding campaign."

We're not supposed to understand making relationships a market research project, and they're not supposed to understand why Donald Williams (class of 1995) and Jackie Manuel (class of 2005) can sit a few seats apart cheering on the Tar Heels as though they were teammates, despite the fact they played ten years apart.

But even with all the differences in the current versions of the programs, it still feels just a little that this could be the year they finally meet in the NCAA Tournament. It has felt this way before, and the universe has never let it happen. The time-space continuum couldn't take it. Atlas would shrug. Dogs and cats, living together.

Could it be this year?

There's a chance.

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Nassir Little

Luke Maye

Coby White

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