Court Vision: Johnson challenged, responds to lead UNC past Louisville
GREENSBORO, N.C. -- No. 19 North Carolina (23-10) -- the No. 5 ACC Tournament seed -- won its second straight game and the rubber match against No. 14 Louisville (24-8), 70-60. The Tar Heels got their best win since the first one over Louisville at home back on January 10, so over two months. North Carolina will now face No. 1 seed Virginia on Friday in front of a relatively partisan crowd for the right to go to the ACC Championship game.
1. North Carolina's toughness has been in question, but the Tar Heels answered the bell
The Tar Heels have just never known how to deal with games when they get difficult. And this one got difficult early, as the Cardinals were doing what they do -- playing tough defense and getting on the glass. They out-rebounded UNC 21-15 in the opening frame, and the Cardinals kept driving into the paint and drawing fouls. North Carolina had 10 fouls to Louisville's five at the break, and the Tar Heels kept making silly plays to put themselves in a deeper hole.
Louisville's big and athletic bodies rebound well, and North Carolina's bigs weren't as involved. At the break, Kennedy Meeks -- who missed the Boston College game because of an illness -- had three points on 1-of-5 shooting and two rebounds. Brice Johnson was just 2-for-7 for four points and one rebound.
Roy Williams hates to use timeouts, but he was upset enough at the 7:37 mark with his team down by six to call a timeout just so that he could scream at Johnson and J.P. Tokoto.
"He gets intense on the sidelines," sophomore Nate Britt said. "When the jacket comes off, the watch and the rings, then you know it's trouble."
"Basically if we didn't want to play hard, don't play," sophomore Isaiah Hicks said, when asked what Williams said. "That's what it came down to. So that pretty much settled that."
It did indeed. But Williams didn't want to take too much credit for that timeout. As the veins popped out in his forehead while his face turned purplish-red, it seemed as much like he wanted to vent than anything else.
"I was really mad. I didn't think we'd hustled very hard and I thought we made silly turnovers. I guess I'd had enough at that point," Williams said. "Besides that, it was really hot out there in the first half, and I wanted to take my coat off. (Johnson) keeps wanting to wear one of my sports coats. I started to give it to him and let him sit in the stands there, and he'd feel better at that point.
"But coaching is coaching. You try to do everything you can to try to get guys to play, but at that point it wasn't a coaching ploy. It was just that I was extremely frustrated."
He's been frustrated with his team's inconsistent effort level all year long, frankly. The play of the bigs has been one of his biggest sources of frustration; Meeks' struggles were understandable because of his illness but Johnson's were a mystery.
"My manhood was definitely challenged. All the coaches were coming at me, even myself," Johnson said. "I mean, it's just I just wasn't playing the way I should have been playing in the first half, and in the second half I decided to man up and just be able to come out and play."
In the second half, Johnson had 18 points on 5-of-8 shooting and made 8-of-8 free throws, adding six rebounds. He'd scream after dunks and out-hustle Louisville players to loose balls, something Williams wants out of him all the time.
HIs teammates at times call him Jonathan -- his given name -- when he isn't playing well, as if to suggest Brice is hiding somewhere deep inside and Jonathan is the bad version of him.
But Meeks said that they haven't called him Jonathan in at least two months.
"Even when he has two points, he's still been Brice because he's being aggressive and giving effort," Meeks said.
Hicks watched Johnson appreciatively from the bench, happy that the team got the good version of Brice.
"Just seeing him out there being aggressive is just like, there you go, Brice," Hicks said, smiling. "There you go."
2. North Carolina vanquished its demons in terms of its end-of-game execution
North Carolina has 10 losses this year, and seven of those losses have come to teams ranked in the current Top 25 (six to teams in the top 14). There's really only one "bad" loss -- to Pitt. But they didn't really have any great wins to speak of, and against some of those good teams, the games seemed there for the taking -- but North Carolina just couldn't seem to do it.
Carolina had trouble earlier in the season in losses to Butler, Iowa and Notre Dame, but then it won six straight and made clutch plays late against Louisville and at N.C. State, even.
Then they saw and 18-point lead evaporate at Louisville and suddenly, the Tar Heels could no longer execute at the end of games. It was close in the second half against Virginia, the Tar Heels lost a late lead at Duke, couldn't claw back from a deficit against N.C. State and then lost a second-half lead at home to Duke again.
They had to prove to themselves, maybe, that they could close out against a good team.
They took a seven-point lead with 3:48 to go, and that was going to be the crunch-time finish. How would it go?
It had a rough start, as North Carolina had a shot clock violation and a bad missed shot by Marcus Paige followed by another turnover, but ultimately Louisville got no closer than four points.
"We just wanted to make sure that we played with intensity, especially on the defensive end. We wanted to limit them to one shot and that's just the way we wanted to play it because Louisville attacks the offensive boards, especially Montrezl (Harrell)," Britt said.
"He's a beast on the boards. We just wanted to make sure they got one shot and we were able to come down and convert on the offensive end."
Once Louisville cut that deficit to four points, though, it got the ball with a chance to cut into that lead twice and couldn't do it.
It was definitely nervous time for the Tar Heels, though -- especially if the thoughts of the previous struggles in such situations entered their heads.
"You don't think about it, because you want to win so bad. I don't think anybody thought about there's a chance we could lose," Meeks said. "We wanted to put the defense first and get stops, get a stop every time down. So that was most important to us."
As much as guys like Johnson are a catalyst for UNC, so too is Paige. He went over 10 minutes at one point in the first half without attempting a field goal. In the second half alone, he had eight points, and almost all of his shots were timely. He ended with 13 on 4-of-9 shooting, and he had five assists.
But at least he didn't have to answer questions about the end-of-game problems anymore.
"We've had some games where we've done poorly and some games we've done well," Paige said. "We even got a shot clock violation, but even then it's a dead ball turnover and you're still killing 35 seconds off the clock. So we're not rushing quick shots any more as much, and we're taking care of the ball for the most part. So those are the two biggest things we're doing differently down the stretch."
It's partly decision-making, yes.
But it's also taking the fight to opponents, which ties into North Carolina's toughness factor, too.
"I guess we just learned from last time, second half at Louisville. We let them be the aggressor and they just took over the game," Hicks said. "That's kind of our problem -- we just settle back and just let the other team play harder than us. It can't come down to that at this point. We've got to want to win just like them. That's what we're here for."
3. Like North Carolina, Louisville kind of is who it is at this point
Both North Carolina and Louisville have relatively high ceilings. But they both have very definite flaws. In the third meeting between the two, at times they brought out the best in each other, and at times it was the worst instead.
"I like to play a full-court game. Coach Pitino likes to play a full court game. They press a little bit more. We tried to do our pressure in the half court, but both of us like to run the ball. Both of us would like to make more three point shots," Williams said. "But I think it's just high-level players that enjoy competing.
"Every game has been so much different. The first game they led basically the whole game and we stole it at the end. Second game we're up 18 and they played great down the stretch. Today they're up 10, and we just kept playing. So I think it's just two groups of kids that like to compete, and I felt very fortunate to be involved."
A reporter from Louisville's student paper asked Pitino what it was about a zone that gives his offense so much trouble.
"Well, you obviously see, if you're from the Louisville Cardinal, that we're not a great shooting team so that's a pretty silly question to ask," Pitino said. "You watched the game, didn't you? You don't have to be an x-and-o genius to figure that one out, do you?"
When Pitino was asked a question more to his liking about the zone, he expanded on it a bit and said that they might try to go small since they're getting nothing at the 5-spot. That was one of two questions Pitino answered, and that was the end of the press conference.
It was Louisville's first postseason loss of any kind to a team not named Kentucky since 2011, but the Cardinals, at this point, are what they are. And Pitino is right -- they're not a great shooting team, and they're not going to be.
They might get hot sometimes, or maybe they'll get more of the shots they want around the rim. That could get them past a round o two in the NCAA Tournament.
But just like North Carolina, a team with flaws of its own, Louisville just has not shown consistently this year that it can string together enough wins to contend for an NCAA title. Which is fine, by the way. Louisville is still one of the best programs in the ACC, and had a fantastic debut season. But there are probably two ACC teams that can win the NCAA title (Duke and Virginia), and everyone else has to hope to get hot and for the right matchups.
"Not a whole lot we can do except to do a better job of recruiting some shooters, because we are who we are right now," Pitino said. "We're a pretty good basketball team, but we weren't as good as Carolina tonight though."
2003 -- This was North Carolina's first win against a higher-seeded team in the ACC Tournament since 2003.
8-of-36, 2-of-17 -- Louisville's second-half shooting numbers overall were 8-of-36, but the Cardinals also made just two of their final 17 shot attempts. They were 4-of-22 from three on the game.