Friedlander: Enough, already. It's time to start taking this North Carolina team seriously

CHARLOTTE, NC – Enough, already.

Enough of the January, February, Izzo, April nonsense. Enough of “the ACC isn’t any good” narrative. Enough of the perception that North Carolina shouldn’t have been a 1 seed.

It’s time to break down and finally admit that these Tar Heels are every bit as good as advertised.
And they’re built for a deep postseason run.

Hubert Davis’ veteran team proved it once again Saturday at Spectrum Center with a dominant performance on both ends of the court and an 85-69 win against 9th-seeded Michigan State in the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament’s West Region.

The victory sends UNC into the Sweet 16 in Los Angeles, the 38th time in school history it has advanced to a regional semifinal — the 31st since the field expanded in 1975.

It might have been chic to pick MSU because of its brand name and coach. And plenty of the national talking heads did. Even the oddsmakers jumped on board by only establishing the Tar Heels as a 3.5-point favorite, according to ESPN BET sportsbook.

Maybe they’ll become believers now.

UNC withstood the Spartans’ early punch, a haymaker that put them into a 12-point hole after the opening 10 1/2 minutes, before fighting back with a vengeance.

It held its opponent to only 3 points over the final 8 minutes of the half to turn that double-digit deficit into an 8-point lead and kept the heat on the rest of the way to make a statement loud enough to be heard by all its doubters.

Not that one should have been necessary.

“I feel like we’ve had a lot of statement wins throughout the whole year,” said Davis, the ACC Player of the Year who led the way with 20 points. “But I guess the respect is still not there.”

MSU didn’t show much of it at the start of the game.

The Spartans gave the naysayers a thrill by hitting UNC with a quick barrage of 3-pointers. They quieted the partisan Tar Heels crowd by taking advantage of a defense that appeared to get knocked back by an early foul on Armando Bacot and jumping to a 26-14 lead.

A head start that only made what happened next all the more impressive.

First, though, came the tongue-lashing from their coach.

Whatever the heck Hubert Davis told his Heels at the 8-minute mark needs to be framed. Completely different team, attitude, execution.

— Saturday Down South (@SatDownSouth) March 23, 2024

“We came into the huddle and I said, ‘Look, we can’t talk about any basketball stuff until we join the fight,” Hubert Davis said afterward. “Once that started, the level of play in terms of energy and effort, the attention to delta, rose. That’s when things started to change.”

And man, did they change fast.

Ramping up the intensity on defense and getting the ball inside to Bacot to score at will or get to the free throw line, the Tar Heels outscored the Spartans 23-3 over the final 8 minutes of the half to take control of the game and look every bit the part of a team capable of running the table all the way to Glendale.

Which is exactly what this team was built to do.

And it showed on Saturday.

It has star power in Davis and Bacot, an element every championship team in recent memory has had, and a capable supporting cast.

Harrison Ingram played that part by making 5-of-7 3-pointers while contributing 17 points and 7 rebounds.

It has role players who make contributions in ways that don’t always show up in the box score, as Jae’Lyn Withers and Seth Trimble did with their defense and Paxson Wojcik did with his spark off the bench.

It has experience, size, versatility, and a fiery coach who has grown as much as his program in his 3 seasons since replacing Hall of Famer Roy Williams. And as it showed against the Spartans, it has the resilience and toughness to take an opponent’s best shot without flinching.

“The huge thing with this team is that we have a belief in ourselves and a swagger, even when we’re down like that, we still don’t think the game is over,” Bacot said. “Going down 12 against a good, well-coached team like that, most teams would panic. But we didn’t panic at all. We knew if we defended, everything would come out our way.”

The Tar Heels’ belief in themselves is nothing new. It’s been there since Hubert Davis so deftly used the transfer portal to assemble a championship-caliber roster around holdovers RJ Davis and Bacot.

It only grew through a 10-game midseason winning streak and has been strengthened even after the wakeup call NC State administered in the ACC Tournament final last week.

Now, maybe, everyone else around the periphery of college basketball will finally start believing in them, too.

If not, there’s always another chance to make a statement next week in LA.