After resounding start to ACC Tournament, UNC appears serious about being serious
In the final minutes of North Carolina’s resounding 92-67 victory against Florida State on Thursday, Hubert Davis had put in the walk-ons and the people in the family-and-friends cheering section behind the Tar Heels bench were hoping for the rarest of highlights. Maybe a Duwe Farris 3-pointer or a Rob Landry layup.
Maybe one last dunk from somebody; an exclamation point on the basketball equivalent of a sentence written in all capital letters, and in bold, as if to sound like screaming. That’s what this was for the Tar Heels on Thursday during the ACC Tournament quarterfinals: a statement, underlined with the font blown up. A message, sent with authority.
They talked a bit of their talk Thursday, upon their arrival in Washington, D.C. Armando Bacot said the Tar Heels were “desperate” to win the ACC Tournament for the first time since 2016. Some of his teammates echoed similar sentiments. They all described what this week meant for a team and a program that’s still trying to wash away whatever it was that happened a year ago.
It’s one thing to talk, though, and another to do. It’s one thing to claim desperation, and another to be on the floor, as Elliot Cadeau was a time or two throughout this demolition, clawing and fighting for loose balls, as if a double-digit lead had been much smaller. Cadeau, UNC’s freshman point guard, sought the fray on Thursday. There wasn’t a UNC player who didn’t.
And the significance, ultimately, for the Tar Heels: They sure do appear serious about being serious.
Any concern of a slow start in this tournament for UNC, of a letdown after it won the ACC’s regular season championship with an emotional, tough victory at Duke five days earlier, disappeared during the final six minutes of the first half on Thursday. That’s when the Tar Heels turned a three-point lead into one that grew as large as 19 points, before taking a 46-30 lead into halftime.
And that was it. There was no Seminoles rally. No life.
No hope on this day of Florida State getting back into it. This was an FSU team that had played UNC tough, twice, during the regular season. The Seminoles held decent-sized second-half leads in both of those games — by 14 in December in Chapel Hill; by eight in Tallahassee in late January. UNC allowed no such hope this time.
And what was that concern, about any possible letdown?
“There’s no room for that in March,” said Cormac Ryan, the graduate student guard who arrived at UNC yearning to be a part of what he now is. “That’s how you end up going home. And the theme for us is to always be hungry and to never be satisfied.
“We always know there’s more to be done.”
The checklist is growing smaller now, as Ryan and his teammates have ticked off different goals. They beat Duke twice. Won the ACC’s regular season. Earned a bunch of individual honors, with RJ Davis as ACC Player of the Year and Hubert Davis ACC Coach of the Year, and Bacot on the ACC’s All-Defensive team, among other accolades.
The objectives that are left are the big ones.
Win the ACC Tournament. The Final Four. The national championship.
Lofty stuff, especially for a group saddled with the pressure after the disappointment of a season ago. The Tar Heels of the 2022-23 season never felt comfortable with the enormous expectations, never gelled and never came close to reaching their considerable potential. This group, meanwhile, was all business on Thursday, and on both ends.
Offensively, UNC turned in one of its most balanced performances of the season, with four players scoring in double figures, led by Davis’ 18. Defensively, the Tar Heels suffocated the Seminoles, who were often hapless even when they generated more open opportunities. If UNC is going to play like this, on both ends — well, good luck to its competition here this week.
Afterward, the Tar Heels’ locker room felt less like an environment of celebration than one of “business as usual.” They said they weren’t any less desperate than they’d been a few hours earlier.
“We’re going to go in every game super desperate,” said Seth Trimble, whose memorable second-half dunk will likely find its way onto an end-of-season highlight video (“jumping high is a fun experience, I guess,” he said of that moment).
About the desperation, he continued: “We’re trying to win. We’re trying to win this ACC Tournament. We want to get the one seed for the tournament coming up.
“We’re just desperate (to) do what we know we can do as a team.”
Said Harrison Ingram, the junior forward: “This is a year that we wanted to prove something.”
Every team enters every season wanting to prove something but it has been especially so for these Tar Heels, after what they experienced a season ago. And it has been especially true for Bacot and RJ Davis and others who were around to experience the humiliation and frustration of a year ago.
On Wednesday morning, UNC practiced at the Washington Wizards facility before returning to the team hotel. Among a group of reporters waiting there, Bacot was asked what Hubert Davis’ “thought of the day” had been during the practice. The daily thought of the day has been a mainstay of UNC practices for a long time. Dean Smith started it. Roy Williams continued it.
And now Davis uses it.
Bacot, though, had to think about it.
“I might get in trouble,” he said, stalling. “Let me look.”
And he pulled out the practice plan and recited what Davis had shared:
“The time to measure success is when all is said and done. Not when there’s more to be said, and more to be done.”
And so Thursday was a start, and only step one of the ACC Tournament. Indeed, this was no time to measure anything. And yet felt like an affirmation, too. The Tar Heels didn’t just talk about being desperate. They played like it, too.
