UNC, NC State delivered a compelling ending — to a game that underscored ACC’s mediocrity
Let’s start with the good, because there was some good, at least, on Saturday during a State-Carolina game that will not exactly be remembered for its artistic merit.
The ending was compelling, for one.
There was that: N.C. State attempting to complete a comeback in the final minutes; North Carolina attempting to hold on. Also good: It came down to the final play and final second, with the Tar Heels’ Jalen Washington swatting away Jayden Taylor’s floater in the lane just before the horn sounded, preserving UNC’s 63-61 victory.
And speaking of Washington, he might have been the greatest positive of all, for either team. Eleven points, 12 rebounds, the game-sealing block before time expired and, moments before that, the dunk on the other end, with 24 seconds left, that put Carolina ahead for good.
This has been a long, strange season for Washington, the 6-foot-10 junior who inherited the unenviable task of replacing Armando Bacot in UNC’s starting lineup. Mostly, though, it has just been a long season for Washington and the rest of UNC’s beleaguered frontcourt — a group of players that has grown familiar with the narratives and the angst.
Washington has heard it, even if he’s tried ignoring it. He’s seen some of the stuff on social media, even if he hasn’t necessarily sought it out.
“I don’t, like, intentionally go out and want to see negative stuff about me,” he said in front of his locker in the depths of Lenovo Center on Saturday, after the first double-double he’s had in college. “That’s not helping me (in) any type of way.”
Yet in another moment, he said it more plainly: “People are gonna say negative stuff all the time. Ain’t nothing that I can do with that.”
And what were social media’s finest basketball experts saying now? Carolina has been searching — and searching ... and searching — for a reliable post presence since this season began. Washington on Saturday at last played with the sort of confidence, and production, that made coach Hubert Davis a believer in him in the first place.
Was this a true turning point? A moment of arrival? A breakout?
Hold those thoughts. Check back in a few weeks.
Seeking identities
What this was, though, was clearly a glimmer in an otherwise mostly drab performance between two teams that have been desperate to find their way. UNC, so shaky against a difficult schedule throughout most of November and December, finally appears to have found some solid ground. N.C. State? Not so much.
It wasn’t that long ago, remember, that these programs played for the ACC Tournament championship in Washington, D.C., and combined to deliver not quite a masterpiece, but something memorable and lasting, nonetheless. State’s victory in that game, only about 10 months ago, was its fifth in five days and portended the Final Four run to come.
The Tar Heels, meanwhile, still entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed before losing a game it easily could’ve won against Alabama in the Sweet 16. Less than a year later, these teams are vastly different from their previous versions. Neither one has really found an identity.
Neither one has successfully overcome what they lost — whether that’s Bacot and Harrison Ingram and Cormac Ryan at UNC, or the DJs (Burns and Horne) at State. For long stretches on Saturday, State and Carolina looked nothing like two teams that so recently met for a championship, but instead looked more like they’re probably headed for Wednesday in Charlotte.
(And hey, that’s better than ACC Tournament Tuesday, isn’t it?)
Duke and ... who else?
Down the road in Durham, Duke on Saturday offered another reminder of its conference superiority. The Blue Devils looked bored in the second half against Notre Dame and they might’ve been while Cooper Flagg did a lot of the work on his way to scoring 42 points, an ACC record for a freshman. In Raleigh, meanwhile, Carolina and State only underscored the ACC’s mediocrity.
This is a conference, after all, that has been so eager to reestablish its basketball supremacy. And yet it hasn’t, and can’t — and won’t this season, even if the Blue Devils go on to win the national championship. Once again, the ACC looks like a four-bid league for the NCAA Tournament, and that’s even after the arrival of three new teams.
It’s a league of Duke and everybody else. Not quite the Blue Devils and the 17 Dwarfs, but not exactly not so much unlike that, either. Who else is reliably good in this league? Maybe Pitt? Maybe Clemson? Maybe, after Saturday, Carolina? The Tar Heels escaped, yes, and Washington and freshman Ian Jackson (stellar again, with 21 points) offered something to build upon ...
... But did you watch this game, for most of it?
Still looking for the magic
Both Davis and State coach Kevin Keatts could try to sell their teams’ performances on Saturday as some kind of defensive wizardry — the low scoring and dicey shot-making the results of just two hard-nosed teams goin’ at it — but that’s not fooling anybody. The first half, which ended with Carolina leading 26-20, had to be among the most aesthetically-displeasing halves of basketball these schools have ever played, in 248 meetings.
State during those first 20 minutes made nine of its 40 attempts from the field. UNC was 12-for-31 at that point, and seemed hot in comparison. Possessions often ended in confounding, sometimes comedically-bad ways: passes bouncing askew and out of bounds; layup attempts falling awry; shot after shot bricking their way off of rims that, could they talk, would’ve been begging for mercy.
For the better part of 30 to 35 minutes, these old rivals committed crimes against basketball — or at least against the part of the game that involves, you know, scoring. It would be one thing, too, if it’d been an anomaly. But Carolina has dabbled in the ugly more often than it ever anticipated when the season began, and State has been there plenty, too.
As the Wolfpack proved not all that long ago, things can change in a hurry. Seasons that look lost can be resurrected. March, indeed, offers eternal hope. As it stands in mid-January, though, these are still teams that are very much trying to recapture whatever magic they possessed a season ago.
Perhaps State rediscovered some of that, at least defensively. Perhaps UNC finally found an answer to its problems in the post. The final few minutes Saturday, when a bad game suddenly turned good — when some truly ugly basketball finally surrendered to a most unworthy finish — at least offered some proof that anything is possible.
