Art’s Angle: ‘Big-Time Onions!’

Oh my god! Did you see that?

It is hard to gauge the importance of Carolina’s comeback win over Ohio State Saturday before a large light-blue-clad crowd at Madison Square Garden.

The Tar Heels’ 89-84 overtime thriller against the 23rd-ranked Buckeyes — in the macro — helps offset a four-game losing streak that not only knocked them out of the rankings and — in the micro — gave them a non-conference resume-builder for the NCAA tournament.

And how they did it diffuses some thought that UNC’s start this season matched last year’s struggles that put them on the NCAA bubble very early. It is a victory over a ranked Power 5 team that the Heels did not get until the first week of last March.

And until midway through the second half, they looked on the way to another one-sided loss like those to Tennessee and Kentucky in late 2021. But thanks to improved depth and toughness, Carolina answered a challenge from Hubert Davis, who after halftime told CBS that he had called them “soft” in the locker room, trailing by 9.

The first half was not pretty. The Tar Heels were out-toughed by a team they knew going in would be very physical; they were also out-shot from both the floor and the arc, out-rebounded, out-assisted and, clearly, out-defended.

The last play of the half summed it up. Down by six points, Carolina was trying to hold the Buckeyes on their final possession. OSU senior Justice Sueing, who already had scored 10 points on 5-for-6 shooting, was on the left side of the 3-point line squaring up. For some reason, Puff Johnson backed off and gave him a clear look for the trey.

Yes, it was only three points, but what was Puff doing as the clock wound down? Davis was on his way to address that kind of mistake when he told the CBS interviewer he would talk to her after the break.

“I challenged them at halftime,” Davis later told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network. “I didn’t feel like they were playing with any energy, effort and enthusiasm. And in this type of game, what has to be had out there is physicality and toughness. I’m so proud of them. They really responded in the second half.”

Thanks to a trapping, full-court defense that forced the Buckeyes to the sideline and into the corners, Carolina cut the deficit to a point within four minutes. But they soon fell behind by 10 again with 10 minutes to play and were still down double-digits with 6:44 remaining. The game looked lost. But it turns out, this team has another gear.

North Carolina forward Leaky Black (1) and Ohio State forward Brice Sensabaugh (10) fight for the ball during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in the CBS Sports Classic, Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022, in New York. The Tar Heels won 89-84 in overtime. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)

Davis used four subs in the first half, one when Caleb Love sat down for 2½ minutes after some wild shooting, and that left the starters with some gas in the tank for the stretch run. Love, who shot 1-for-6 and had three points, kept firing in the second half and finished with 22 points, including four 3-pointers, plus 7 assists against 2 turnovers. UNC is now 22-0, dating back to last season, when Love made five or more assists.

Armando Bacot had two great halves and notched his 56th career double-double (28 and 15). R.J. Davis was the third star in the late surge and wound up with 21 points, 8 rebounds and 4 assists, including his “and-one” putback on a fifth straight offensive rebound and his 3-ball that gave the Heels their first lead since an 11-1 run early in the first half.

It was the first game this season that three UNC players scored 20 or more.

But the savior was Pete Nance, whose turnaround jumper with 1.2 left forced overtime and continues to carve out his own legacy in his own way, playing 40 minutes with 8 points and 10 rebounds. The Houdini act began with the old Dean Smith method of getting a last-second shot by hording his timeouts (think Walter Davis in the famous 1974 “8 points in 17 seconds” rally).

The Heels had two left and after the first Leaky Black, apparently the Heels’ best passer, fired the ball from the baseline to midcourt, where R.J. Davis caught it and called UNC’s last timeout.

Hubert Davis said they didn’t exactly have a play to score within 1.2 seconds and that assistant coach Jeff Lebo drew one up to get the ball to Nance in one of his comfort zones.

Black inbounded across the court to Nance, who caught it with his back to the basket, turned and got it off a tenth of a second before the buzzer sounded. It went in cleanly – “Big-time onions!” Bill Raftery chortled on TV — and Carolina was going into overtime, hoping to win it in one extra period and avoid the four they had in the loss to Alabama.

In overtime, Love, Bacot and Davis scored all 10 points as the Heels hung on for their eighth victory that left the UNC crowd, including Roy Williams sitting behind the bench, exhausted but celebrating the improbable win. Same with the huge national TV audience.

The Tar Heels face another Big Ten opponent, Michigan, Wednesday night at Michael Jordan’s Jumpman Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte. A win there would leave Carolina 9-4 and likely back in the rankings as ACC play resumes at Pitt on December 30.

There is plenty of work left to do. Getting better shots and knowing when to take them is atop the list. Black’s clutch 3-pointer from the left corner trimmed the deficit to one point, but his ill-advised bomb early in the shot clock from the opposite corner with a 75-74 lead was not the shot to take.

Plagued by foul trouble that limited him to the fewest minutes (34) among the starters, Black had 7 points and 6 rebounds, plus 2 assists and a steal, and his two passes to help get the game into overtime will be remembered for a long while.

In the end, Hubert Davis loved the kind of ramped-up defense that held Ohio State (7-3) to 5 of 17 shooting and forced the Buckeyes into four turnovers in the final seven minutes and overtime.

“It’s obviously about getting defensive stops and making shots,” he said. “But it’s also about that toughness.”

Photo via AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson.

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