From start to finish, Carolina’s 81-64 win over Notre Dame Saturday was a beautiful thing.
Let’s start with the Fighting Irish, who have perhaps their biggest talent dearth in recent memory and ended the game with an 0-5 ACC record and 8-8 overall.
But they have a great coach in Mike Brey, who in his 22 years at South Bend has been forced to adapt his style to his players and vice versa. They have experience with 6 grad transfers on the roster and understand how Brey wants them to play.
Their passing, screening and ball movement were fluid, and they made half of their 31 shots to stay relatively close at halftime.
Due to Pete Nance’s nagging back strain and the three-guard lineup’s success against Wake Forest, Hubert Davis started freshman Seth Trimble against a smaller opponent, and the switching defense and unselfish offense carried over before a packed house at the Smith Center for a rare 11:30 am tip-off.
Carolina’s team defense and sharing the ball widened the gap before Notre Dame closed it to seven points and the Heels pulled away with a late 20-10 run where Armando Bacot, Leaky Black and R.J. Davis combined for 16. Trimble’s fourth assist and Puff Johnson’s crowd-pleasing dunk to cap his season-high 11 points triggered the spurt that bumped UNC’s record to 11-5 and 3-2 in the ACC.
The Tar Heels not only beat the Irish on the scoreboard, but in every statistical category – shooting from the floor, arc and line; assists, steals and blocks; points off turnovers; points in the paint; second-chance points; fast break baskets and, hooray, bench scoring. The Heels led for more than 34 minutes and finished with one point less than their biggest lead in the game.
It was undermanned Notre Dame, of course, and a far tougher test comes Tuesday night at Virginia and the top 20 and disciplined Cavaliers, against whom mistakes must be held to a minimum and good shooting needs to continue.
Bacot keeps upping his game, and Hubert Davis said after the senior’s 58th career double-double (21 points and 13 boards) and fifth straight 20-plus point effort that Mondo is “working harder and playing harder” in practice and games. He is now two double-doubles away from UNC’s career leader Billy Cunningham (the famed Kangaroo Kid, who of course did it over only three varsity seasons).
Black had another superb non-scoring game and continues to remind us of Dudley Bradley, the Secretary of Defense who was the 13th pick in the 1979 NBA draft. Black only scored four points but had 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks and zero turnovers and helped hold the Irish to 42 percent shooting for the game.
And R.J. Davis again played the most minutes and turned in another splendid outing with 13 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals. Davis’ shooting stats continue inching up toward last year’s marks and his assist-turnover ratio (54-31) remains the best on the team.
The all-around performance came from Caleb Love, who broke out of a brief shooting slump by nailing Carolina’s first shot of the game from 3-point range and went on to hit two more bombs and finished with 18 points.
Caleb also starred in the halftime show, appearing with Michael Jackson, Jr. of the famous Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in a video titled “Artists Are Athletes and Athletes Are Artists.” His spinning and jumping portion was shot at the Dean Dome while Jackson did his at Memorial Hall, home venue of Carolina Performing Arts.
The postproduction, which melded the movements of both “artist and athlete” was done by Raleigh’s Myriad Video, whose composer and film director played college basketball and understood the vision of Carolina Performing Arts Executive and Artistic Director Alison Friedman.
“They immediately got the vision and created this masterpiece storyboard that involved so much precision lighting, shooting and editing to create the tight, millisecond-timed result,” Friedman explained.
Friedman, who succeeded CPA founder Emil Kang in 2021, came to UNC after graduating from Brown and spending 20 years as an artistic director in China.
“As soon as I accepted the position at Carolina and before leaving Hong Kong, I knew I wanted to do this collaboration,” Friedman said. “My career has always focused on bridging communities and cultures through the arts, showing how much we share in common just expressed in different ways.”
After Friedman reached out to the athletic department and basketball program, Love was asked to participate because he is a player who she believes “embodied the height and hang time of leaps and layups and was open to something new, a little outside of everyone’s comfort zone.
“Caleb is a natural in front of the camera and was super open and responsive to the director of photography’s needs to get every precision shot and the lighting just right,” said Friedman, who has become a huge Tar Heel sports fan since moving to Chapel Hill.
Jackson is the lead dancer for Alvin Ailey, one of the world’s most renowned companies and, according to Friedman, “understood exactly how to choreograph his moves to find the natural alignment with Caleb’s.
“It worked when everyone got out of their way and let these two icons of excellence do what they do best,” she said.
Hubert Davis was thrilled Love wanted to do it and “explore the connection between our game and artistry. Athletics, dance, music, art, they are all binding and bring us together. We are thankfull and honored they asked us to be a part of it.”
Indeed, Love had a day where he starred – from the college court to the big screen.
Photo via Todd Melet.
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