#MIDDLEBURY #SPORTS
By Mark Vasto
“North Carolina folks being what North Carolina folks are and such … Tar Heels … people who don’t budge an inch backward, it should come to you as no surprise that the dadgum lot of them brought home a new set of silver for the table, yessir.” … something someone like Mark Twain could have said, while wearing seersucker and sipping sweet tea.
So North Carolina has its sixth championship, and coach Roy Williams has his third after a not-so-thrilling final that capped off a very thrilling tournament in 2017. The nearly flawless Gonzaga Bulldogs, the great spirit of Spokane, finally went from bracket buster to Butler-style heartbreaker, while North Carolina cemented the notion that you have to take the belt from a champion.
Going into the finals, the Gonzaga storyline was well-trodden. Mark Few is quite a basketball mind, and he has steadily built his program into perennial, outer-fringe contenders since the Clinton administration. This year, with a stepped-up foreign-student program, the Zags ripped through the regular season and worked their way into the finals on the strength of a strong inside game and tight defense.
Not so for the Tar Heels. They were down in almost every contest. Down five to Kentucky. Down eight to Oregon, and yes, even down seven to Gonzaga at one point. But they refused to go away each time. And it’s why the rankings meant nothing when the two programs took to the floor. As soon as the Heels came out for warmups, the Gonzaga players knew it was for real. This is North … Freaking … Carolina. These guys ain’t gonna fold.
You cannot start a second half throwing up bricks, letting North Carolina go on runs, getting anywhere near the lead with four minutes to play. Whatever they needed to do (outside the obvious, making their shots) – be it call more timeouts, fewer timeouts, purchase ACME products and build a tremendous wall around their basket – it should have been done. It should have been done because everyone in the stadium or watching on TV saw that North Carolina finished like a steam train – a really fast and powerful steam train – the kind that gets fouled in the paint and wins championships.
They kept flogging the whole “#redemption” angle of the game … that the boys were struggling from the aftereffects of horrendous PTSD for having been in the finals last year, too. What it showed was a remarkable consistency and tenacity. North Carolina is in a different class. It doesn’t make a difference how many they invite to the dance … the Southern belle from Chapel Hill left with the crown yet again.
Mark Vasto is a veteran sportswriter who lives in New Jersey.
(c) 2017 King Features Synd., Inc.
