Roy Williams walked into the North Carolina locker room and apologized to his players, some of whom had been bent over and sobbing moments before after the Tar Heels’ stunning 74-73 defeat against Duke on Wednesday night. It was an improbable defeat given the circumstances – given UNC’s advantage in depth and given that Duke for most of the night at the Smith Center played on without Matt Jones, one of its starters, and played in the second half through perilous foul trouble.
And yet the defeat wasn’t all that improbable, either, because it had happened before, in a way. The Tar Heels had lost like this, after failing to hold second-half leads. They had lost amid late failures in tense moments, lost when they couldn’t make a key shot or come up with a key defensive stop.
And wasn’t that what happened again on Wednesday night at the Smith Center? With a little under seven minutes left, the Tar Heels were ahead by eight, 68-60. Then, the lead kept dwindling, down to six points, and four, down to two, and then one, and then there was no lead at all for UNC after Luke Kennard, the freshman from Duke whose role increased due to Jones’ injury, made a three-pointer with less than three minutes left, putting the Blue Devils ahead 72-71 and inciting a gloomy silence among the crowd.
It had been so raucous, so energized just minutes earlier when it appeared that UNC was one shot away, or one defensive stop away, from seizing control and putting the scrappy Blue Devils out of their misery. What happened then, during those final seven minutes.
UNC players, after collecting themselves, after hearing their coach apologize to them, met with reporters and tried to put it into words. Brice Johnson, the Tar Heels’ senior forward who finished with 29 points and 19 rebounds, pursed his lips and shook his head while he spoke. “All of a sudden they decided to clamp down and didn’t want us to score and then Brandon (Ingram) and Grayson (Allen) were just attacking, and Grayson got to the line quite a few times and Brandon hit a couple shots,” Johnson said. “So that’s probably the biggest difference.
” That, and UNC’s inability to do much of anything offensively. Marcus Paige, Johnson’s classmate and longtime close friend, sat on another end of the Tar Heels’ players lounge and tried to do his part to explain the breakdowns during the final seven minutes, after UNC took that eight-point lead. “They made some shots,” Paige said. “I just said that Brandon Ingram made some really tough shots. We didn’t get the ball where we needed it to go, and we missed some easy ones – had some turnovers. That’s – yeah.”
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