Lucas: Now And Then

By Adam Lucas

Let's make a pact: this should be about this night only.

It really should be. This wasn't about history or Roy Williams against NC State or anything other than February 25, 2020, a day when North Carolina needed a basketball win about as much as any time in program history.

So we will just talk about Garrison Brooks and his 30 points and his six-of-six free throws in the final minute and 14-of-16 overall. So many times this year things have gone in the final minute, and this time there was just swish…swish…swish.

"I was saying my little brother Justin's name when I shot the ball, because he's so cool under pressure," Brooks said.

Now look, I know we said no history, but there simply must be a little. Roy Williams is now 37-4 against NC State as a head coach. Assuming the Tar Heels and Wolfpack play twice a season, he could lose every single game against the Pack for the next 16 years and still have a winning record against them. At that point, he would be 87 years old. Unless, that is, losing 32 straight to NC State killed him.

But tonight was not about that. Tonight was about Christian Keeling, who may have had the biggest field goal of the game and whose eight quick points midway through the second half took it from a tie game to an eight-point Tar Heel lead they would not relinquish.

Keeling's emergence has largely been overshadowed by Carolina's struggles, but don't forget that his minutes had almost disappeared at one point this season. At that point, instead of pouting, he worked, and practiced, and learned, and now every time he launches one of those 17-footers you think it's going in.

But he's done something else: he's fought. He pulled down a huge second half defensive rebound against State center D.J. Funderburke and also drew a foul and some feistiness from the Pack center, making twice in two games that Keeling has been unafraid to challenge the biggest opponent on the floor.

That was fuel for a Smith Center crowd of over 21,000 that won't get enough credit but should. On a night when Pack fans made the drive down I-40 because they had that feeling this might be the year, and when they arrived ready to fill the Smith Center with that omnipresent, "Wolf...Pack" chant, Carolina fans refused to let them do it. They were loud and they were into the game and they mattered in the outcome. Their team is 10-17 and they showed up. Carolina basketball is different, never forget that.

Sorry, but we must have more history. Your grandmother might have told you about the stranglehold NC State used to have on this series, when they won nine in a row from February 29, 1972-January 18, 1975. That's when Phil Ford arrived. Since then, Carolina is an incredible 80-25 against the Pack.

State won 30 games against Carolina in the first 24 years of Atlantic Coast Conference play. They've won 25 against the Heels in the next 45 years of the conference. Since Roy Williams took over at Carolina in the spring of 2003, the very best—the best!—Wolfpack record against UNC that any four-year NC State undergraduate class has seen is 2-6. In the last 15 years, Williams has as many national championships (three) as he has losses to NC State.

Your father might have told you about the headshaking events of 1992, when a bad State team beat tenth-ranked Carolina, 99-88, at Reynolds Coliseum. The Wolfpack then lost nine in a row, a stretch that included a 22-point loss to Florida State, a 24-point loss to Marquette and a home defeat to East Tennessee State…before somehow breaking the losing streak with a 99-94 win over fourth-ranked Carolina exactly one month later.

For nearly 30 years, that has been one of the most bizarre sequences in the series. Now we have the blue equivalent, with the Heels beating State in Raleigh, losing seven straight, and then toppling the Pack again. This year's Carolina team has been stymied more by injuries and inexplicable narrow losses; they're better than that 1992 State team that featured Tom Gugliotta and not much else. But now they're forever linked, which will likely be of very little solace to anyone who prefers red.

Both ends of this year's Tar Heel sweep featured outstanding performances from Garrison Brooks, who played the goggles right off his scratched cornea and then won the game at the free throw line at the end. "It was only a matter of time," Brooks said after the game, "until we started making plays down the stretch."

Yes, Garrison, but we were starting to wonder if any of us had that much time left. And if you felt frustrated by the last month, imagine what it's been like to live through the opposite side of this series recently.

State fans in this decade have grown up waiting for their latest Carolina tormentor to graduate, only to see them replaced by another one. A Wolfpack prayer: one day Marcus Paige and his 50 points in two games in 2014 will be gone…except he'll be replaced by Luke Maye, who averaged 28.5 points and 12.5 rebounds per game in his last four contests against the Pack…who will then hand the baton to Garrison Brooks, who has even more points against State this year (55) than Maye did last year (52).

Bad news, Pack fans: Brooks—who has 55 points and 20 rebounds against NC State this year—has another year of eligibility. That's plenty of time to get his as yet-unnamed apprentice ready to assume the Pack-demoralizing duties in 2022.

It's all coordinated by a head coach who gave a brief window into his mindset after the game. Reflecting on State's 10-0 lead early in the game, Williams said, "That's two times in my career we've been down 10-0 to those guys in this building."

For the record, the other time was on Jan. 7, 2006, nearly 15 years ago, when the Pack held an 11-0 advantage before Carolina pulled ahead for an 82-69 win. Who in the world remembers the opening and ultimately completely inconsequential minutes of a game 15 years ago? Roy Williams does, because these games matter to him. Do you see that? It's not just losing to NC State that he hates. It's simply trailing at all, at any juncture in the game, any time, any place, to the point that he instantly recalls it 15 years later even a couple minutes after a game. Oh, and another thing: "I still haven't called timeout," he said of those two runs, and he said it with just a little hint of pride.

Brooks has developed some of his coach's love for playing against NC State. But he knows the head man still enjoys it most of all. The junior sat back and allowed a rare wide smile as he pondered the meaning of this particular win to his coach. "I don't think," Brooks said, "that words can describe how happy he is."

Players Mentioned

Garrison Brooks

Christian Keeling

Luke Maye

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