Lucas: How They Did It

By Adam Lucas

CHESTNUT HILL—There is never a bad time for a Danny Green quote and now would be a very good time.

Carolina completed a 9-0 Atlantic Coast Conference road season on Tuesday night in Chestnut Hill with a 79-66 win at Boston College that wasn't as close as the score indicated. The Tar Heels are the second ACC team to ever go 9-0 on the road (last year's Virginia club is the other) and this marks just the second time in the Roy Williams era—and just the second time in more than 30 years—that the Heels have been undefeated on the road in the league.

How rare is it? Prior to 2008, when Williams led the Heels to 8-0 away from the Smith Center in the conference, the last time Carolina had done it was when Williams was on the bench as an assistant coach for the 1986-87 campaign.

Those are some nice numbers. Impressive, even.

But here's where we bring in Danny Green. Do you remember 2009? Of course you do. The Tar Heels blitzed the rest of the nation in the NCAA Tournament, winning six tournament games by an average of 20.2 points per game on the way to the national championship.

It was Green who stood up in front of an adoring Smith Center crowd at the welcome home celebration after Carolina thumped Michigan State in Detroit, and said—as only Danny Green could say—"We did it, y'all."

Then he paused just a second. "But the way we did it, did y'all see the way we did it?"

That's what might be lost in the celebration of Carolina's 9-0 ACC road record this season. Sure, they did it. But did you see the way they did it?

The vast majority of Carolina's road conference games were exactly like Tuesday night's visit to Boston College, in which the Tar Heels took a big early lead and held that advantage in the second half. Even with most of the BC starters in at the end of the game, the home team never got closer than 13 points in the final 25:28.

This correlates to one of the most unbelievable Carolina basketball statistics of this season. The Tar Heels played 180 second half minutes on the road in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season. They trailed for just seven minutes and 22 seconds of that second half time. Away from home in the toughest league in college basketball, Carolina trailed for approximately four percent of the second half minutes it played.

In fact, Carolina trailed in the second half in just two of the nine league road games it played this season. Clemson had a lead for 5:12 in the final half on Saturday, and Miami led for 2:10 of the final half back on Jan. 19. That's it. The Tar Heels went to Pitt, NCSU, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Wake Forest, Duke and Boston College and never trailed for a single second in the second half.

That's pretty impressive. But maybe you'll chirp that because of the unbalanced ACC schedule, Carolina missed out on trips to Florida State, Virginia Tech, Virginia and Syracuse this year. That's completely true, just as it's factual that last year Virginia didn't have to travel to Clemson or Carolina, both of which ended the season as ranked teams.

But listen to our man Danny. It's not just that the Tar Heels did it. It's the way they did it.

Out of those 180 second half road minutes this season, Roy Williams' team had a double-digit lead for 119 minutes and 50 seconds. You read that right. Nearly two-thirds of the time in ACC road games, Carolina was up by at least ten points in the second half.

If you're wondering why your remote control has mostly survived the regular season intact and why it's almost mid-March and your dog doesn't shrink back when you enter the den, it's because Carolina didn't just win on the road. They dominated. Under the direction of the best road coach in the history of the ACC--Williams has the highest road winning percentage in conference history among coaches with at least 100 road games--Carolina was a juggernaut.

As one of the three key seniors pointed out, that domination began in the first half, and enabled Carolina to play away from home with the road crowds neutered for much of the second half.

"We have come out strong," said Cameron Johnson, who had a double-double at Boston College with 22 points and 12 rebounds. "We take the lead early and we take our time getting the stuff we want. We have a lot of guys who can score from a lot of different spots on the floor and that's always beneficial. You come into a road game, and the crowd is always hostile. It's always big for us to get a good start in the first half to propel us into the second."

There are no more road games left, of course. Everything that remains is either at the Smith Center or at a neutral site. It's time to put away the road success. But when you think back on this 2019 Carolina team, and you remember how well they played away from home, don't just remember that they did it. Remember how they did it.

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cameron Johnson

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