Lucas: Final Four

By Adam Lucas

DURHAM—There will be talk about the free throws. There will be talk about the perimeter shooting. There will be talk about the blocks.

But all you really need to talk about is the final four minutes.

At the 3:57 mark, Pete Nance made his first field goal, a jumper that tied the score at 57.

From that point forward, the Tar Heels had the ball with the chance to take the lead three different times. Those three possessions went:

Missed open three-pointer.

A bad turnover.

Missed driving shot near the rim after a possession that included zero passes.

The two-minute stretch, quite simply, was Carolina's chance to take control of the game. Duke was similarly struggling, and even once it got under two minutes, the Devils still weren't very efficient on their first shot of the possession. But what they did do was exactly what Hubert Davis had told his team for two straight days at practice that they would do—they went to the offensive glass. Duke has been one of the best offensive rebounding teams in the country for the entire season.

"You have to finish every defensive play," Davis had said at Friday's practice. "You have to rebound every missed shot. No second chances."

The number one key to the game on the Tar Heel scouting report was, in all capital letters: BOX OUT, BOX OUT, BOX OUT!

Duke's final two field goals came on second chance opportunities, some of which were aided by complete failures to box out.

That's the kind of final four minutes it was for the Tar Heels, who simply didn't play well enough down the stretch to win an Atlantic Coast Conference road game, much less a Carolina-Duke road game. Certainly, an inability to get to the free throw line was impactful in the game. The Tar Heels took just three free throws (zero in the second half), tied for the program's lowest in the ACC era.

But even getting basically zero offense from the charity stripe—which has been one of Carolina's best sources of points this season—the Tar Heels were still tied and had the ball and the chance to take the lead on multiple occasions in the closing minutes.

Those are the possessions when a veteran team should instinctively make the correct play. Instead, there were some frustrating breakdowns, including a miscommunication on the backbreaking Duke basket when Jeremy Roach cruised in for an uncontested layup after two Tar Heels mixed up the defensive call.

If you'd been told before the game that Duke was about to score fewer points against Carolina at Cameron than any game since 1979 (before the shot clock was added to the game), you'd have felt pretty good about the Tar Heel chances. Instead, it's a second straight loss.

It's worth remembering that the situation felt pretty dark after the first Duke game last year, too. The Blue Devils looked immensely more talented than the Tar Heels after a rout at the Smith Center. But Carolina improved from February to March, and then again from March to April, when they ended Duke's season in New Orleans.

There's a very, very long way to go before any Final Four talk this year. But there was last year in early February also. The first steps, which need to happen Tuesday at Wake Forest, are pretty simple: execute more like a veteran team, and play both ends of the court with discipline and attention to detail.

"It's been a frustrating week," Davis said. "Next week could be a great week."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Pete Nance

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