It was some battle for the blues on Tuesday night.

For all of you Tar Heel fanatics who join me by minoring in political science, what a night it was for those rooting for our teams draped in blue. While Carolina’s win at Miami certainly wasn’t historic, or artistic, it strangely mirrored what was going on down in the Georgia Senate runoffs.

Led by Leaky Black, who may be running for mayor of Chapel Hill some day, knocking down his first of his career-high four 3-pointers for a career-high 16 points, the Tar Heels went comfortably ahead early. But it was going to be a long night like it was in the Peach State.

The Democratic Senatorial candidates blew out to leads of more than 100,000 votes, but if you’ve watched enough political races recently, you knew that wouldn’t last.

So just as the underdog Hurricanes were gaining confidence from another really bad stretch of ball by the turnover-prone, poor-shooting and failing-to-get-it-inside Heels, the red candidates down in Georgia caught up based on election-day voting.

And while we were thinking Roy Williams’ team was going down, the counting of early and mail-in votes started a comeback rivaled by what his Heels pulled off after trailing by 9 with 6 minutes to play.

We began screaming for both blue teams to do it, and dad gum if they didn’t. Roy was about to lose his mind, and Garrison Brooks had already lost his stoic composure in a rare bad game. But his pivotal mates Armando Bacot and Day’Ron Sharpe woke up suddenly and combined for five points and the Heels were back in it.

So were the Reverend and the journalist from Atlanta, rallying again with support from the urban and suburbans.

By the time Leaky made up for missing two from the line by making his fourth three-ball from the corner, Brooks dropped two clutch free throws and Andrew Playtek somehow scored in traffic, Jones Angell was yelling on the radio, “How did they win this game!”

The team flew home and we went to bed, the thoughts of victory dancing in our heads.

 

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