Lucas: Beyond The Box

By Adam Lucas

We have passed the point in the season when we should hope for a blowout every now and then.

Carolina beat Pittsburgh, 67-66, on Saturday. It was the tenth one-possession game of the season, a school record…and there are still nine league games left to play. It was the 12^th time out of 24 games that the margin was within five points with five minutes to play.

So this year's Tar Heels are going to play games like this. That's who they are. The question now is how do they consistently win them?

Against the Panthers, they showed the very simple answer.

By definition, teams in these types of games are similar to their opponent. They make roughly the same amount of shots. They miss around the same amount of free throws. They commit approximately the same turnovers. That's why the games are close—the teams are alike.

In that case, the plays that make the difference, in many cases, are the ones that don't show up in the box score. They are deflections, floor burns and tipped rebounds. They are the plays that not every team is willing to make in every game.

They are the plays that, even when the execution isn't perfect or the shots aren't falling, can still sometimes tilt a game.

And those are the plays that Carolina made.

"I told the team after the game," Hubert Davis told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network, "that I hope this gave them a clear picture of the little things they can do that make big things happen."

The Tar Heels had the opportunity to roll over. With just over four minutes left, Pitt converted a lob dunk to go up by two and Carolina responded by missing a dunk. Maybe it just wasn't the Heels' afternoon. Just a couple minutes earlier, Zack Austin had tossed in an improbable rainbow three-pointer as the shot clock expired.

Things weren't trending positively; adversity was definitely present.

They played through it. Up one with under three minutes to play, a coaching adjustment called for Carolina to double ball screens against Jaland Lowe. The subsequent rotation put the long-armed Drake Powell on Lowe, and the freshman forced a miss.

With 90 seconds left and the Panthers holding a one-point lead, Carolina again doubled the ball screen. Lowe had to get rid of it—the Tar Heels weren't going to let him beat them—and he fed it to Guillermo Diaz Graham.

This is where the strategy forced a risk: Diaz Graham had Cameron Corhen open in the paint for an easy basket. A quick pass and hoop would've given Pitt a three-point lead.

But the pass had to go over the hawk-like reach of Powell, who is dynamic as a perimeter defender. He jumped and tipped the ball, allowing RJ Davis to recover it. It was one of Powell's game-high three steals.

On the next Pitt possession—after Davis had made an extremely tough step-back jumper for what would eventually be the winning points—Ven-Allen Lubin fought for a defensive rebound, wrestled it away, and held on long enough to force Lowe to commit his fifth foul.

Lubin missed the ensuing front end of a one-and-one—look, don't watch this year's Tar Heels expecting perfection or a lack of drama—but scrapped hard enough for the rebound that he slapped it out of bounds off a Panther.

The signature play of the win came with 13.5 seconds remaining. Pitt inbounded in front of their bench, trailing by a point. Lubin contested the in-bounds pass and knocked it free. Seth Trimble threw himself on the loose ball and deflected it into the backcourt. He promptly scrambled back to his feet, sprinted down the court, and threw himself on it again, knocking it free just long enough for Powell to also come careening across the floor and deflect it out of bounds. The effort required for Trimble to get on the floor twice for the same loose ball—not to mention the athleticism—might very well have been the difference in the game.

Without really meaning to, and with a whole lot of hustle, the Tar Heels had taken Pitt out of whatever Jeff Capel had diagrammed during the timeout. They eventually forced one last miss, securing a win they absolutely had to have.

"We executed down the stretch," RJ Davis said on the THSN. "Ven getting the missed free throw was huge. Seth and Drake diving on that loose ball and the effort to get that ball. Drake deflecting the ball off a double team. We've struggled with execution throughout the year, but we were better today."

And they'll have to continue to be better over the final eight games of the regular season. We don't know where this team will finish in the ACC. We don't know their postseason fate. But we know one thing for certain, one thing that is absolutely part of their DNA and that will make those little plays much more important over the next month.

"This team," RJ Davis said as he stood outside the Carolina locker room, "just loves nailbiters."

Players Mentioned

RJ Davis

Ven-Allen Lubin

Drake Powell

Seth Trimble

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