RALEIGH, N.C. — Alone with Leaky Black in the visitors’ locker room at PNC Arena, Black’s navy North Carolina hoodie zipped all the way to his chin and into his scraggly beard, a reporter breaks the unwritten code of polite postgame interview sessions.
He curses.
It comes rolling off the tongue so naturally, no other way to phrase the blunt reality facing these Tar Heels:
Leaky, everyone tonight said this team is tougher. What does that mean? Everyone seems to say that, but it’s almost like there’s a “f*ck it” attitude …
Black interrupts.
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“No, no, for sure,” he explains, pulling in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper. “I didn’t want to say it, but I’m glad you did. For sure. That’s exactly what it is. At this point, it’s like, what else do we have to lose?”
He smiles. The secret is out, not that it already wasn’t after UNC’s 75-65 win over N.C. State on Monday night. But for this once-reeling team — the same group that lost five straight games, that went nearly an entire month into 2020 without a win — the time for feeling sorry has clearly passed.
Really, why shouldn’t it be in the rearview? Having plummeted to the bottom of the ACC standings, was there any lower to go? Had the bottom not already been scraped?
Clearly it had been. But in the last five days, North Carolina has done the only thing possible after sinking so low: Slowly, bit by bit, it began rising back up. In the locker room after a double-overtime loss at Virginia Tech, players applauded their improved effort. Not a win — effort. But then they did so again against depleted Miami, finally reaping the rewards of their new-found effort level with a win.
But not after Virginia Tech nor Miami was a performance such as Monday’s expected, a gut punch of a rivalry battle in a bloodthirsty arena.
“Needless to say,” coach Roy Williams said, “we feel really good at this moment.”
He meant that pertaining to the game, and that much certainly should be allowed. UNC posted its second-best shooting percentage of the season (49.1), while thoroughly dominating in its traditional categories. Rebounding, a 42-31 edge. Free throws attempted, a 25-7 edge (and a 17-5 advantage in makes). The Tar Heels only scored one more fast-break point than the Wolfpack, but hey, baby steps.
Perhaps most impressive was that UNC did so after N.C. State slapped it in the face in the game’s opening minutes. The Wolfpack went into the first media timeout up 12-6, led by Jerciole Hellems’ eight points. The crowd roared, truly, as if some subterranean beast had been awakened. All that positive juju, momentum, whatever you want to call it, seemed like it had evaporated over the weekend.
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But that’s toughness, right? Not backing down in that situation? Recognizing, hey, this isn’t easy, but let’s do it anyway.
“I just wanted to tell the guys to stay poised,” senior Brandon Robinson said. “In basketball games, there’s gonna be a lot of adversity. A lot of ups and downs. Turnovers gonna happen, they gonna make shots. But I just said, if we turn the ball over, let’s just go down there and get a stop, then let’s go back on the other end and score.
“And I told Garrison (Brooks), hey man, I need you to pull through for me tonight because I ain’t got it.”
For Robinson, UNC’s senior leader, to say that is telling. He has been on an absolute heater these last six games — well, the last six he’s played at least, considering he missed the Virginia Tech game with neck pain stemming from a recent car crash — and scored a career-high 29 against the Hurricanes.
That sort of production has been sorely needed for UNC to have a chance in any game, especially considering that star freshman guard Cole Anthony is still out after having surgery to repair a partially torn right meniscus in December. (An important aside: Anthony did say Monday he’s about 90 percent healthy and essentially just waiting on clearance from the team’s medical staff to return, which should be the most welcome of updates to UNC fans.)
So without Anthony, Robinson has been one of “the guys” for UNC, along with Brooks, who is playing less like a college junior and more like a cyborg wearing human skin. And when Robinson rolled his ankle early in Monday’s game, the same ankle that cost him the first four games this season, he knew to defer to the other half of the Heels’ burgeoning leadership duo.
“We wouldn’t win no games without these two,” grad transfer Christian Keeling said, pointing to Brooks and Robinson in the locker room. “They’re the backbone of our team, and we take our lead off of them. They’re captains for a reason.”
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Brooks promptly responded to Robinson going down by going berserk. The kind of berserk that looks like 17 first-half points and seven rebounds on 7-of-10 shooting, scoring at will in the paint and on short jumpers and at the free-throw line. The best illustration of Brooks’ dominance was on the half’s final play, when freshman Armando Bacot missed a free throw after being fouled on a layup. Brooks positioned himself in juuuuust the right place to snag the rebound and deftly lay it back in before the final seconds ticked off the clock. Those four points ended up being the halftime margin — and enough that the Tar Heels didn’t trail again the rest of the night.
That was even with Robinson’s ankle injury, and again after he injured his ribs. At one point early in the second half, Robinson walked straight off the court holding his midsection and into the tunnel to the locker room. He would soon return, only to later crumple to the ground after getting hit in the ribs trying to close out a shot.
There, sprawled on the court, boos pouring down, it seemed near-impossible he would finish the game. Good thing he did, though.
While UNC never trailed again, the Wolfpack at least were going to make things interesting. With 1:35 to play, Devon Daniels made a shot that cut the lead to eight. The Wolfpack then went about trying to extend the game, sending UNC to the free-throw line time and time again.
But Brooks missed the front-end of a 1-and-1, then did so a second time after securing his own offensive rebound and being fouled. Then Keeling missed a pair of free throws. N.C. State couldn’t hit a shot during the same period to tighten things up, but the opportunity was there. Finally, Robinson ended up at the line, limping and staggering to the stripe.
“I was hurting the whole night, to be honest with you,” he said. “After I rolled my ankle, I was feeling terrible, but that’s what comes with the game. And it’s crazy, my favorite player and my idol, he passed away yesterday, Kobe Bryant. And I just kept thinking to myself, if Kobe was playing right now, would he come out of the game?”
Ah yes, the Kobe influence. Robinson met Bryant in the 11th grade at the Nike Skills Academy in California, when Bryant surprised campers with his appearance. Robinson, who regularly argues his teammates that Bryant is the G.O.A.T, made sure to snag a photo that he keeps with him to this day.
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Robinson said when he learned Sunday that Bryant, 41, had died in a helicopter crash, he cried. He looked at that photo, then cried some more. Before Monday’s game, he scribbled Bryant’s number, 24 and “Black Mamba” on the back heel of his basketball shoes.
“During the game when he was hurt, I was just telling him, ‘Mamba mentality,’ ” Black said. “As corny as it is, it was getting him through it.”
So Robinson did what his idol would’ve done: He stayed on the court. He left twice, but came back each time. And with his team dearly needing someone, anyone, to hit game-sealing free throws, he swallowed the pain in his side and did exactly that.
“He made the tougher plays,” Brooks said. “Of course my plays were loud and people are always gonna see the 25 points and stuff, but B-Rob made the toughest plays down the stretch: getting the board, getting fouled and being tough enough to make free throws.”
There’s that word again: toughness.
So what does it mean? Black didn’t quite answer. Williams did, sort of, saying his group of inexperienced players — two grad transfers, a handful of freshmen, other upperclassmen unaccustomed to so much playing time — is figuring things out with each passing game.
“I think they’re understanding a little bit about how intense you have to be to play in this league and at this level,” he said. “Leaky missed 16 or 18 games last year and he’s one of our top three veterans. But I think they’re understanding the intensity you have to play with.”
Perhaps, but there’s more to it than that too.
In that sense, Black did nail it.
This UNC team was left for dead. It was washed up, no good, ready to be erased from college basketball’s collective memory. But these players, they didn’t see it that way. First, they may have sulked, especially when their coach said they were the “least-gifted” bunch he has ever had. (Williams maintains far too much has been made of that quote: “That’s the most normal statement that’s gotten the most unbelievable attention of anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”) Then, in those losses to Georgia Tech and Pitt, perhaps they lost hope, finally started believing the junk they saw on social media, about how bad or worthless or disappointing they were.
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But then, when they could have done what everyone else expected of them, when they could have mailed in the next two months and unceremoniously gone on their ways, they didn’t. They realized, we’re already in historic company for how awful we’ve been; now who says we can’t get better?
Or as Brooks put so eloquently, “I’m tired of losing.”
The result has been astounding, even for those who watch the team on a regular basis. It’s not just that Robinson and Brooks have stepped up their games, as one might have expected two veteran players to do. It’s that Keeling and fellow grad transfer Justin Pierce and Andrew Platek and K.J. Smith have all stepped up too. And now, with the team’s most talented player set to return to the court, it feels like the Tar Heels’ fortune has turned in the span of a week.
In reality, it has.
That’s not to say that UNC, now 10-10, is suddenly an NCAA Tournament shoo-in. Far from it. But after being laughed out of the postseason conversation entirely, North Carolina is, win by win, forcing its way back into the conversation.
And if you don’t like it, that’s your problem.
Now that is toughness.
“Like Coach says, have the balls to make (shots),” Keeling said. “You’ve got to have a different type of concentration, a different type of the details. You’ve gotta have the competitiveness.
“The last few games, we’ve played with enthusiasm. We’ve had fun. It’s great to have fun, when you don’t have to worry about nothing. Just have fun, be loose. And like you said, there is a little ‘f*ck it’ in it.”
(Photo of Garrison Brooks: Jaylynn Nash/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
