Stacks of grilled cheese sandwiches were piled on a table in the middle of the room, untouched between containers of vegetable medley and macaroni salad. North Carolina Tar Heels assistant coach Hubert Davis was in an adjacent entryway crying, covering his eyes and trying to conceal a quivering, decaying upper lip behind a can of soda. Forward Kennedy Meeks was in a corner searching for words and finding only tears. At one point, teammate Brice Johnson leaned in and tapped him on his leg.
"C'mon," Johnson said in a soothing tone. "It's all right."
This is the flipside of Villanova's One Shining Moment. North Carolina will someday remember it as Many Nights of Agony. And for the Tar Heels, this was the first. It began at the buzzer Monday night, with Wildcats forward Kris Jenkins plunging an unmerciful 3-pointer for a 77-74 victory that will live in Carolina infamy. The moments after were raw, quiet and painful. The kind of thing that left Heels coach Roy Williams apologizing to his team late in the evening because he couldn't reach into their chests and pull out the anguish.
"I'm not very good, 'cause I can't take away the hurt," Williams would say later. "I'm not very good because I can't change that. I told them I loved them. I told them I wished I could have helped them more. [And] that I appreciated them from the bottom of my heart."
The heart is a good place to start in the losing locker room of an NCAA title game. The Tar Heels entered the night with theirs full and pumping rocket fuel, only to exit it with the posture of a deflated balloon. Bodies sagged into chairs. Towels hung over heads. Foggy expressions on the perimeter of the locker room said everything, without speaking much at all. The little that was said mostly revolved around a splinter of time: a mere five seconds that became one of the most amazing moments in Carolina basketball history, then was hammered flat.
Marcus Paige and that incredible double-clutch 3-pointer to tie the national championship at 74-74. It was improbable, almost impossible, and most certainly something for the ages. But this particular age lasted for only a few minutes. Roughly enough time for Villanova to take a timeout and then run a ball up the court and stop the hearts of hundreds of thousands of the baby-blue clad faithful. Even the incomparable Michael Jordan shared in every bit of the agony.
The hard part for Carolina is that Paige did everything perfect on Carolina's last basket. The isolation play was called specifically for him, and he navigated it with aplomb. He waited for a defensive switch, watched a defender fall, and rose for his game-tying triple. Even when another defender came careening into his direction, he hesitated and double-pumped perfectly. And even when a teammate was open underneath for an easy two-point basket, he went all-in for the tie, clanking in a shot that lit an explosion inside NRG Stadium.
In that moment, it was bedlam. Writers on media row grabbed their heads in disbelief. Carolina fans, including Jordan, who was seated among the masses, erupted in jubilation. Paige had a hard time containing himself, pogoing his way to halfcourt before Villanova called timeout. And when he got to the huddle, he shared what he thought was a bit of destiny. The Tar Heels had this. He was sure of it.
"I was about 99 percent sure we were going to win," Paige said. "We just had to get through that 4.7 seconds. Think about how it would be from [Villanova's] point of view, to have the championship in your hands and then you have to go to overtime against a team that just clawed back from down 10 and has a new life? I thought that was it. Maybe that's partially my bad for not taking that 4.7 seriously."
That's the funny thing about what happened Monday night. Paige and the Tar Heels were on their way to a championship, and never saw the sinkhole in their path. The Wildcats raced down court, Jenkins lofted his three at the buzzer, and it was over.
"The moment that you had been clawing for, fighting every day for, hoping for, dreaming about – just goes away," Paige said. "Like, that fast."
The best and worst moments of NCAA title games weave themselves into the fibers of history, but it's often forgotten that they are rarely born in singularity. Sometimes, good can be trumped by better, and bad can be undone by worse. The Tar Heels know this because they've been on the best side of it twice.
Jordan's game-winner in 1982 is roundly celebrated, but the moment has an infamous sibling: when Fred Brown surrendered the game by inexplicably passing the final possession to out-of-position Tar Heels star James Worthy. The 1993 title was a celebration of the grit in Eric Montross, Donald Williams and George Lynch, but could have been undone by a missed Pat Sullivan free throw in the final seconds. Instead, Michigan's Chris Webber called the most notorious timeout (one he didn't have) in the history of college basketball.
This North Carolina team would have loved to have been part of that lineage. And it fought into position to make that happen. But Paige's championship moment eventually became one that wasn't and this is ultimately how this team will be remembered.
"When you're a kid growing up, you don't dream of missing the last-second shot," Paige said. "You don't dream of a team beating you at the buzzer. You dream of having that moment, and that confetti, seeing your family over there crying tears of joy. Hugging guys that you've had blood, sweat and tears with for four years, that's what you dream of. … There's only five seats at that [championship] table [for Carolina]. 57', 82', 93', 2005 and 2009. We had a chair pulled all the way up to that table and we just couldn't quite get there.
"It's something that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life."
One Shining Moment. Many Nights of Agony. Unfortunately for this Tar Heels team, their historic moment was stolen. And history likely won't let them forget that anytime soon.
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