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CLEMSON, SC – To paraphrase, legendary former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith occasionally used a certain line to calm his team in tense moments on the road in hostile environments:
"There are a billion people in China who couldn’t care less about who wins this game,” Smith would tell his team during a timeout, or something along those lines.
The tactic was simple: Yes, this is a very stressful moment, but it’s just a basketball game and not too big for the team to handle.
Hubert Davis played for Smith at UNC, as did his uncle, Walter Davis, whose jersey hangs in the rafters in the building that dons Smith’s name. So naturally, Davis learned some things from his innovative former head coach. And on Tuesday night in rowdy Littlejohn Coliseum, the first-year Carolina coach channeled a bit of his inner Smith in the game’s waning moments.
“In the huddle, they were a little out of control,” Davis said, not long after the Tar Heels escaped Clemson with a 79-77 victory. “And I was trying to calm them down and just say, 'Look, guys, we've been in this situation before just last week.' I made a joke to them. I said, 'Look, guys, all we need to do is score and get a stop and we win.’”
But it didn’t stop there. The punchline, or more the mood-easer, followed.
“‘The great thing about it is let's try not to go into overtime, let's win this game in regulation so we can get home at a good hour of the night,'” Davis said, smiling. “And they all started laughing.”
That took place with 21 seconds remaining on the clock and the score knotted at 77-77. Following the inbound, Caleb Love made a straight-line drive to the basket, drew a Clemson defender, and dished the ball to trailing big man Brady Manek, who laid in the ball giving UNC the game-winning points with 3.1 seconds left to play.
The moment wasn’t too big for Davis or his team. They are navigating his inaugural season as the fabled program’s leader, and until a week ago, hadn’t really been tested in a down-to-the-wire situation. Only two games prior to last week’s win at Louisville had seen margins of less than four points inside the final five minutes: A win over Brown at home in November and a loss at Notre Dame in early January.
Carolina found a way to scratch and claw its way to a win on the road versus the Cardinals, and Tuesday night did the same against a better Tigers team. The moment can get to young athletes, especially if they haven’t faced such situations all that often.
The same can go for a 51-year-old rookie head coach. But his words and their ears meshed at just the right time. So instead of being tight and making a mistake in that key situation, the Heels were relaxed and flourished.
“Remaining poised,” sophomore guard RJ Davis said, referring to the key in getting the late-game win Tuesday. “If we remain poised, we’re going to be fine.”
And it helped that the Heels and their coach had been to the rodeo before.
“We’ve been in situations like this, we’re not new to it,” said Davis, who finished with 16 points, six assists, and no turnovers. “We’re not new to the environment, we’re not new to teams playing us close. I think it’s a good test for us, and I think we overcame a lot today. I’m so proud of these guys the way we fought.”
They fought but they also executed, just like in the overtime period at Louisville last week.
The Heels made some blunders late in both games, but weren’t thrown off by them. They learned in both games’ most strained moments to push aside the stress and simply make something happen. And it all began with Hubert Davis taking a cue from the late mythical Smith.
“I think it loosened them up a little bit,” Carolina’s coach said. “But I think it really helped that we had been in the situation before and been successful in it. And so, it was a situation where we felt comfortable in what we needed to do on both ends of the floor. And all we needed to do was just execute.”
And in a way, his words and their execution kind of went hand-in-hand.
