After flirting with disaster, UNC keeps NCAA tournament hopes alive in OT thriller
It’s hard to imagine any other way North Carolina could have sent its seniors out after a season like this. Always flirting with disaster, sometimes finding a way to avert catastrophe.
Catastrophic would have been a mild way to describe what appeared to be an imminent loss to Syracuse on Monday, with the immediate and inevitable consequence of returning from Brooklyn with anything short of a championship to host an opening-round NIT game in two weeks.
Caleb Love somehow managed to bail the Tar Heels out of the hole he helped dig while missing 12 of his first 14 shots. He made four of his last five, including the biggest of the game – an NBA-range 3-pointer with 7.9 seconds to go and the Tar Heels down one, the functional end of their season pressing down upon them.
That they gave up a quick bucket at the other end to end up in overtime didn’t reflect well on their focus, but the Tar Heels left no doubt in the extra period, a surprisingly authoritative conclusion to a game that was anything but, not to mention most of the season.
There were hugs with seniors Leaky Black and Brady Manek afterward, in the aftermath of a too-close-for-comfort 88-79 overtime win, but it was relief as much as anything, given the unthinkable alternative.
“I can’t even lie, at one point in the second half with a minute left, I was not sure we were going to win that game,” North Carolina forward Armando Bacot said. “But we won and we can’t be in those situations anymore.”
In terms of its talent, North Carolina is still probably the second-most talented team in the ACC, with a bona fide player-of-the-year candidate and the possible defensive player of the year. In terms of its record, it doesn’t have to show up at the ACC tournament until Thursday, three wins from a title. In terms of the process, it’s been anything but smooth.
That was certainly true Monday, when the Tar Heels let Cole Swider get loose for a career-high 36 points, the most by any player in an ACC game this season and one short of Lionel Simmons’ 34-year-old Smith Center opponent record. They let the overmatched Orange hang around until the end, letting their own season hang out over the abyss in the process.
But this may be a bit of a turning point for the Tar Heels. There will be no expectations placed upon them Saturday in Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron, a game where unthinkable pressure will be on Duke not to screw up. Monday, all the pressure was on the Tar Heels not to trip over their own feet this close to the finish line. They’re rarely going to be favored the rest of the way, however long that way is, other than perhaps their ACC and NCAA tournament openers.
Even perched on the bubbliest part of the bubble, they’re playing with house money now, and they might even have learned something along the way. North Carolina coach Hubert Davis called it a “collective togetherness this group is forming every day,” a long time coming for a team that didn’t always look like it was on the same page this season, and even on Monday, until it had no alternative.
“Our back’s been against the wall the whole year,” Love said. “Despite all the criticism, the stuff that we went through the whole season, it built us for these type of moments, these games like today.”
Love exemplifies the entire team’s boom-or-bust season, the Tar Heels almost always going as the explosive but mercurial guard goes, never shy to pull the trigger, never predictable. Syracuse didn’t even extend its zone all the way out to Love on the climactic shot, as if unable to believe he would let fly from that far out.
“All season long he’s hit those shots,” Bacot said. “I guess we’ve got to live or die with it … and today we lived.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 10:02 PM.
