CHAPEL HILL – The way North Carolina played Saturday versus Miami matters, and it will be combed over by the coaches in due time. But what matters most is the Tar Heels won a game perhaps they shouldn’t have.

Or at the very least, they won a game in which so many things did not go well periodically revealing their many warts, each of which could have proven costly.

But they didn’t. They found a way, and sometimes that’s the best kind of win to help galvanize a reeling team and merge it into a more constructive disposition moving forward.

It’s like a slumping hitter in baseball getting a seeing-eye single or Texas leaguer to get his bat going again. That’s possibly what UNC’s 45-42 mistake-filled win over Miami could do for the Tar Heels. That is certainly the vibe that emanated from Carolina Coach Mack Brown’s postgame press conference.