Lucas: Whatever It Takes – University of North Carolina Athletics

CHARLOTTESVILLE—Let us first have some perspective.
            
North Carolina last won a basketball game here in 2012. At that point in time, Marcus Paige was a high school basketball player. He has since been through a four-year Tar Heel playing career, played professional basketball, and is now on the coaching staff.
            
Hubert Davis was an ESPN analyst. He has since joined the Carolina staff as an assistant coach, directed the Tar Heel JV team, and become the program’s fifth head coach in the last 63 years.
            
Armando Bacot was in only his second year as a Tar Heel…no, I am obviously just kidding. It was actually his first year.
            
How long ago was 2012? I wasn’t even mad at Creighton the last time Carolina won here. Roy Williams Court was just…a court. Carolina and Duke had never played in the Final Four.
            
Think of all the ways your life was different in 2012. And yet, during all the changes you’ve undergone since then, all the things you have done and stopped doing and tried for the first time and enjoyed for the last time, you have never watched the Tar Heels win a basketball game at John Paul Jones Arena.
            
Until today.
            
Did someone in Chapel Hill do something to offend someone at Virginia? Did they taunt the Wahoos while scoring 83 points (83 points! In Charlottesville!) in a 2009 win? Did they not acknowledge that every living basketball player is former Virginia star Cory Alexander’s “my guy”? Did they do something truly heinous such as paint a mustache on Thomas Jefferson while calling The Grounds “campus”?
            
Whatever caused it, the drought had become inescapable. The pilot of the team plane mentioned it during Friday’s trip to Charlottesville—and you should understand that the pilot of the team plane never mentions anything. There is not one specific “pilot of the team plane”; he is simply an employee of the charter company who happens to draw the Carolina flight. It is not a job where you josh around with the occupants of your flight. But even he thought it notable and worth mentioning over the PA system that the Tar Heels hadn’t won at Virginia until 2012.
            
Until today.
            
And if they were going to do it, it was always going to have to look like this. You might not recognize it because you haven’t seen it in so long, but this is the way to win at Virginia. Teams very rarely beat the Cavaliers by being pretty.
            
Instead, they beat them with the leading scorer going 1-for-14, as RJ Davis did on Saturday. Or they beat them with their primary inside presence drawing two fouls and sitting for the final 12:39 of the first half, as happened to Armando Bacot.
            
There are no signature shots or sweet dunks or glitzy passes (OK, there was one very nice Davis pass to Bacot).
            
“What we talked about leading up to this game was doing whatever it takes,” Hubert Davis told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network. “Whatever it takes on the defensive end to get a stop, get a rebound, defend without fouling, get through screens. Whatever it takes on the offensive end to get an open shot, get to the free throw line, dominate points in the paint, execute.”
            
So there aren’t very many highlight reel moments. Unless you like Bacot coming back in the second half to notch yet another double-double, and somehow managing to squeeze between two defenders to corral the rebound off a missed Tar Heel free throw with under a minute left, a hustle play that felt like the Wahoo backbreaker.
            
Or there was RJ Davis, missing 13 of his 14 shots, but still ripping the ball away from Reece Beekman with five minutes left in an eight-point game.
            
If you wanted beauty on Saturday, you probably had to find it on the sideline. The most visually appealing play of the game might have been a called one out of a Tar Heel timeout. Carolina held a five-point lead and needed a hoop—on a day when you only make 16 baskets, you almost always need a hoop. The Tar Heel coaching staff created some traffic on the baseline, Virginia lost their assignments, and Harrison Ingram had a wide-open layup.
            
This will likely be remembered as the Cormac Ryan Game, as he continued his recent surge by making six three-point shots for his 18 points. It was fitting, because despite Ryan’s reputation as a shooter, his disposition is more suited for games like this, for every possession mattering and every defensive stop a big one. You could just tell that he absolutely thrived on the Virginia crowd starting to roar in the first half as the Cavs put together a mini-run…and then Ryan swishing a three-pointer and taking the opportunity to put his finger to his lips to silence the fans while on his way back on defense.
            
“Cormac is tough and has been in moments like this,” Hubert Davis said. “He wants to be in these types of moments.”
            
And, finally, so did the Tar Heels. The last time they won here, Tyler Zeller made a key basket with 13.3 seconds remaining. This time, he had played an entire pro career, gotten married, had children, and was the Tar Heel Sports Network color analyst.
            
That’s what 12 years will do. And that’s how long it took the Tar Heels to get a very satisfying win. As the Tar Heels ran off the court after the 54-44 win–I know, I know, 54-44 is not a pretty score–there was an indisputably beautiful sound: the noise of only Carolina fans cheering, and of “Tar!-Heels!” echoing back and forth across the JPJ Arena court.
            
“Whatever it takes,” Hubert Davis said. “And that’s what the guys did today.”