If any of the Tar Heels slept a wink Wednesday night, they awoke Thursday at the crossroads of their basketball season.

They played well enough to win at Duke – in fact, should have won – but a heartbreaker like that can sometimes have a more negative effect than if they played hard, did some good things and lost by, say, 12 points.

We’ll know soon when they play Georgia Tech, the ACC’s 11th-place team, Saturday at noon at home. If they get after it from the opening tip and beat the Yellow Jackets handily, then Roy Williams’ fear over losing to Duke will not be realized.

“You don’t want to turn one loss into two because you are still thinking about the last game,” he says often.

But if the Heels come out flat, allow a Tech team that has played better than its record of late to stick around and win unconvincingly, then the hangover from Duke might very well extend to the BIG home game against State Tuesday night.

It is hard to lose a 10-point lead with less than four minutes remaining, perhaps harder after being ahead by 7 points with 1:36 left. But Carolina made some mistakes that inexplicably belied the great 16 minutes they had played while outscoring Duke by 17 points over that stretch of the second half, holding the Blue Devils to 18.

With Duke in hurry-up mode and going right to the basket on every possession, Carolina could have changed defenses to try to slow down the Blue Devils and make them take some precious ticks off the clock. Why they didn’t is on Roy Williams, who used a 1-3-1 zone last year to befuddle the Blue Devils and win at the Smith Center. Williams wanted to give up only two-point field goals, because he did not think there was enough time left for Duke to catch up that way.

But there was time, due to Carolina scoring only four points over the last three minutes while Duke scored 14 in a hurry.

Justise Winslow started it with a three-pointer, and Marcus Paige’s driving layup rolled off the rim. Kennedy Meeks fouled Winslow, and in a critical 12 seconds Duke got three offensive rebounds before Tyus Jones finally made a layup to cut the deficit to five points with 1:26 left. Duke called its last time out.

Coming out of the huddle knowing Duke would press, Meeks threw long to Paige and it went out of bounds. Short-passing the ball to a nearby guard who could take it up court or get fouled should have been the play.

Even though J.P. Tokoto stole Duke’s inbound pass right back, Nate Britt was fouled immediately. After a delay to fix Duke’s balky shot clock, Britt (an 86-percent free throw shooter) short-armed the one-and-one and Jones cut the lead to three points with two FTs on the other end. Now you had a one possession game with 1:16 still to play.

Brice Johnson made two clutch FTs, but Jones made a three-point play the old way when he drove the lane and scored while being fouled by Joel Berry, one of several questionable calls in the game. After his free throw it was 81-79.

Johnson was fouled again when he could have passed to an open Paige, (84-percent free throw shooter). Johnson (64 percent) missed this time and Jones completed his nine-straight points to tie the game with 26 ticks left as Jahlil Okafor had two arms around Tokoto who was trying to stop Jones. After a UNC timeout, Paige’s missed jumper sent the game to overtime.

In short, Duke made every play necessary and Carolina provided the time to do it, playing tentatively (like when Isaiah Hicks had a lane to the basket and did not take it at the end of regulation).

And some of the late calls (or non-calls) sucked.

Just like at Louisville, a visiting team that loses a big lead ignites the crowd and must contend with a hot opponent. Overtimes like that are hard to overcome.

So now, the crossroads. Forget that you could have tied Duke in the ACC race and been a game up on Louisville for one of the top four seeds in the ACC Tournament. All that is still possible by applying the good defensive and rebounding stretches in Durham to run the ACC table. That means beating Tech, State and Duke at home and winning in Miami and Atlanta for a 13-5 finish.

If Louisville also wins out and finishes 13-5, the Cardinals would get the fourth seed because they will have beaten first-place Virginia on March 7th (UNC lost to UVa in their one meeting). But the ‘Ville has a slightly tougher final five games than the Tar Heels – home against Miami, at Georgia Tech and Florida State and home versus Notre Dame and Virginia.

Fourth place in the ACC means a double bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals and having to win only three games (as opposed to four) to be ACC champion.

Carolina is not a physically tough team; that’s been established by now. Its game is run and score and defend as best it can. The game plan against Duke was well executed for the first 36 minutes, as doubling Okafor at the post kept him from dominating. But the Tar Heels had trouble stopping Jones and Quinn Cook, who each had 22 points, and could not find enough ways to get the ball to Paige.

So while these particular Heels won’t win most backyard brawls, they can at least act more decisively late in games and, from the bench to the floor, be a little smarter with what they choose to do.