Lucas: With Pace

By Adam Lucas

BLACKSBURG—Hubert Davis stood at midcourt at the Smith Center on Friday watching his team practice.

It was the first time the Tar Heels had been back in the building in ten days. They were coming off three losses in four games, an extended, NBA-style road trip, and were dealing with injury issues to perhaps their most irreplaceable player, Armando Bacot.

Davis didn't care about any of that. Friday's practice was focused almost entirely on Carolina, on five-on-zero execution and transition offense and out of bounds play execution. Throughout the two-hour session, he repeated one phrase frequently, usually while clapping his hands and raising his voice:

"With pace!"

The Tar Heel head coach thought his team had occasionally been too casual in some of those defeats. He wanted them to play more crisply, to set screens more firmly and defend more actively.

Needless to say, Carolina's first 30 minutes against Virginia Tech on Sunday did not have a lot of pace. Facing the adversity created by the absence of Armando Bacot and D'Marco Dunn, the Tar Heels initially responded by, well, not responding. On the way to watching—and that word is very descriptive of what was occurring—Virginia Tech build an 18-point lead with 12:39 remaining in the game, which was still a 16-point advantage with under ten minutes to play, the Tar Heels managed to hand out just two assists, collected two offensive rebounds out of 23 opportunities, and allowed the Hokies to outscore them by 22 points in the paint.

Davis had already eviscerated his squad during the first media timeout of the second half, destroying a clipboard and storming out of the huddle after watching his team trail by ten points at halftime and promptly allowing Tech to score on five of the first six possessions of the second half. Three of those five baskets were on layups.

"Coach had some important words to say in the huddle," said freshman Seth Trimble of what may have been the biggest explosion of the Davis era. "He was telling us that we had to want it, and that we had to show emotion. We weren't playing together. We listened to him."

Well, eventually. The situation didn't improve immediately, as evidenced by the eventual 18-point hole.

But over the final quarter of the game, the Tar Heels finally located some effort. They played with, yes, pace, and cut the deficit to three with three minutes left and still were within five with 75 seconds remaining.

The genesis of that near-comeback came from a most unexpected source: the Tar Heel bench. You might have thought that to make a nearly 20-point comeback, this particular Carolina team—especially given the absences—would need Caleb Love to toss in a handful of three-pointers or RJ Davis to catch fire from the perimeter. Instead, it began with a pair of freshmen, Trimble and Tyler Nickel.

Trimble entered the game for the first time in the second half with 10:21 left and promptly scored less than a minute later. But it was defensively where he made his biggest contributions, applying more pressure, creating turnovers, and generally being a pest to Sean Pedulla. That defensive intensity sped up the Hokies and changed the tempo of the game. Finally, Carolina was playing with pace. As Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game, "When we finally brought it, we cut into the lead just like that."

Trimble was so annoying, in fact, that he eventually went jaw-to-jaw with Pedulla, a welcome bit of swagger from a Carolina team that had been too passive early in the game, absorbing multiple Hokie punches—of the metaphorical type—without ever swinging back. Trimble was so unwilling to concede any ground that he also had one of the highlight reel blocks of the season when he soared to deny MJ Collins at the rim with five minutes left.

"I filter things through my own experience of playing basketball," Hubert Davis said. "Give me one minute or give me 40 minutes, and I'm going to fight you and compete. That's just who I am. I'm proud of those guys—Seth played extended minutes, and Tyler Nickel really fought today. I'm proud of them."

"In the first half, they were the more physical team," Trimble said. "They wanted it more. In the second half, we fought back, and we showed a will."

Nickel has always had the will to score. He did that again while back in his home state, scoring eight points in his 25 minutes. But he also competed more aggressively on defense and it was his effort with a minute left that created an offensive rebound that cut the deficit to six, preserving the final shred of hope.

Second chance opportunities had been rare all afternoon; Tar Heel starters had one offensive rebound in 139 minutes, which belonged to Pete Nance. The Carolina bench, featuring one each from Trimble, Nickel and Dontrez Styles, had three offensive boards in 61 minutes.

The next week determines whether those ten minutes were a sign of what's to come in the future—when, remember, the Tar Heels will eventually add back Bacot, incorporate Jalen Washington and benefit from the return of a maturing Dunn—or whether it was simply sheer desperation borne of Davis' ire that can't be replicated. You never truly know the turning point of the season when it happens; no one last season knew immediately after the loss at Wake Forest that they'd all be pointing to the days that followed as the key to the season.

"We need to look at those last ten minutes and tell ourselves that that is the team we are," Trimble said. "When we give full effort, the outcome is right there. That's how good we can be. RJ, Caleb, and all those guys aren't going to score on every possession. They need us to be physical and they need us to be aggressive all the time. If we play like that from here on out, that team from the last ten minutes is who we can be."

"I'm proud that we finally brought it with about ten minutes to go in the game," the head coach said. "But my hope is that we bring it for a full 40 minutes."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

RJ Davis

D'Marco Dunn

Caleb Love

Pete Nance

Tyler Nickel

Dontrez Styles

Seth Trimble

Jalen Washington

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