Gather ‘round, boys and girls, and hear the tale of two halves.
Carolina shot 25 percent (7-for-28) in the first half, equaling the poorest performance of the season, and the third-lowest in the 36-year history of the Dean Smith Center. The building’s namesake loved the statistic points-per-possession; in this game his old team scored 29 points on 50 possessions, a ppp of .58 when the goal is 1.0. Awful.
The Tar Heels trailed by 16 points late in the first half, the second straight game they fell behind by that many. Their top scorer was a freshman who entered the fray averaging 3.4 points. UNC’s seasonal leader went scoreless and had three personal fouls.
The first time this season fans and students were allowed in, the small crowd sounded close to capacity before the game and just after it began. By the halftime buzzer, 14 turnovers later, they had become crickets, some lost souls getting ready to pack up and head home.
“I reminded them we had the ball to start the second half,” said Roy Williams, perhaps playing a regular season with the most pressure he had faced in a 33-year career. “I said, ‘If we score, get a stop and score again, then get another stop, we’re back in the game.”
But this wasn’t any opponent. It was the 11th-ranked team in the country and the defending ACC champions on their way to a second straight regular-season title. It was a team loaded with talent, size and girth. It was a team that had to have left the court laughing.
Almost two hours later, Carolina’s coach said the game reminded him of another between the two schools in 1993, when the home team trailed by 20 points to silence a true capacity crowd. Those opponents left the floor laughing and invented a term, “cheese and wine crowd.”
But those Tar Heels, who rallied for a dramatic victory, were on their way to the national championship. These weren’t even sure they were going to the post-season. Then their head coach, his 500th home game in that role, watched his team’s greatest comeback under far more difficult circumstances.
Florida State folded like past Seminoles had in losing 18 prior visits since joking about passive fans. They allowed their hosts to shoot 50 percent in the second half and ring up a ppp percentage of 1.07 in scoring 49 points, outscoring them by 20.
Carolina’s leader at halftime continued to lead the way, finishing with college-career highs of 20 points, 8 rebounds and 4 blocked shots. Walker Kessler, a 7-footer who may still be growing, came to Chapel Hill with great promise, yet sat in quarantine for 14 days after having proximity to students with coronavirus.
This is a player to watch for more than his numbers on the day. He runs the court like a gazelle and glides beneath the basket so effortlessly that he seems to open the floor for others to operate. And, most of all, he is learning to play the college game with confidence.
Kessler started the second half and scored three of Carolina’s first four field goals. His dunk on a pass from fellow freshman Caleb Love gave the Tar Heels the lead back since four minutes into the game. He also scored on jump shots and drives. And his play was contagious, especially among his classmates.
It was the first time in UNC’s illustrious hoops history that all four Tar Heels to score in double figures – Kessler, Love, R.J. Davis and Kerwin Walton – were freshmen. They made sweet music rivaling a famous quartet of nearly 70 years before, aptly named The Four Freshmen. That was the past; this may be the future.
Carolina’s win, its first in more than a year over a ranked team, likely returns the Tar Heels to the NCAA tournament after they began sliding from the 2021 field with an embarrassing home loss to Marquette.
It also takes mounting pressure off Williams, the Hall of Fame coach whose last two teams have not performed to all levels of expectation, which is to say good enough for the NCAA tourney.
Fans are fickle, and they were remined that the win was also their coach’s 900th and makes him the fourth, and the fastest, to reach that plateau in college basketball history – 1,161 games over 33 seasons.
He says his personal numbers don’t matter as much as how many games his teams win in a particular season. That number is currently 15 and, more importantly, nine in the ACC whose schedule has been decimated by a virus that has turned the sport, as well as American life, upside down.
In one half of basketball, his Tar Heels turned their world right side up by playing the game almost flawlessly, making all 14 of their clutch free throws when they were sorely needed and not giving up the ball carelessly like they had earlier and so many times heretofore.
On this day, at least, the future looks far brighter. They enter their final week of the regular season facing two teams that suffered devastating losses to their NCAA chances before and after Carolina won one for the ages.
Featured image via ACC Media
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