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Heels advance to NIT title game

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Staff

BASKETBALL NOTES
Frank Heath

The Tar Heels are in the finals! On Tuesday night, North Carolina punched its ticket into the championship game of the National Invitation Tournament by fighting past the Rhode Island Rams, 68-67, in overtime, in a game that is being described as “ugly.” And ugly it was, as the teams combined for 33 turnovers and made just a shade better than 36 percent of their total shots.

What gave Carolina this win was a combination of the Tar Heels’ hard work on the backboards and their newfound ability to counterpunch against opponents’ runs and to make key plays at crunch time. UNC finished with a 53-39 rebounding advantage and had three double-figure rebounders (Deon Thompson with 13; John Henson, 11; and Marcus Ginyard, 10). And when the Heels faced a 59-54 deficit following a made free-throw by the Rams’ Ben Eades with 1:47 remaining, Carolina point guard Larry Drew II calmly and confidently stepped up to score five points in 35 seconds, knotting the score and sending the game to overtime.

Will Graves (14 points) then kicked off the overtime by burying a three-pointer and Tyler Zeller later completed a three-point play off a good pass from Drew; the boost those two plays gave Carolina proved to be just enough to lift the Heels to a one-point win.

So the Tar Heels will take their ugly win and set their sights on Thursday’s championship-game opponent, Dayton, which topped Ole Miss on Tuesday night in another ugly semifinal.

Most pundits will tell you that in post-season tournament play, a win is a win; neither of these finalists would have preferred to have played well and lost.

And make no mistake about it, Carolina should want to win Thursday’s game and the 2010 NIT title. Yes, it is still just the NIT, but a bit of history should convince the Tar Heels of the significance of finishing the season strong, now that they’ve made it this far.

A quick look at the last three NIT championship games shows that among the participants in those finals were three schools – Baylor, Ohio State and West Virginia – that made impressive runs in this season’s NCAA Tournament. And West Virginia, the 2007 NIT winner, is of course still alive in the NCAA Final Four.

Coincidence? Maybe. But looking further back, there have been some interesting correlations between NIT winners and finalists, and those teams’ future successes in the Bigger Dance. In 1985, the Indiana Hoosiers reached the NIT final, losing to UCLA, and the next season the Hoosiers won the NCAA Tournament. And in 1979, the Hoosiers won the NIT championship, then won the NCAA Tournament in 1981. Virginia captured the NIT in 1980, then reached the NCAA Final Four in 1981. Kentucky won the NIT in 1976, then took the bigger title in 1978; and of course, there’s UNC, which reached the NCAA Final Four in 1972, after winning the NIT title in 1971.

So it may not feel like a big deal to be playing in New York City on a Thursday night in early April, when the real action begins in Indianapolis on Saturday. But the impact of how these Tar Heels finish up their NIT run could very well spill over into next season and beyond.

And even if it does not, it has been obvious that the team has finally, over the past four games, been having fun. Which in and of itself should be something on which to hang one’s hat.

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