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CHAPEL HILL – Imagine for a moment what must have been Brady Manek’s experience for the one hour and 12 minutes he was in the locker room while his teammates remained on the court trying to win the most important basketball game of their lives.
North Carolina’s most prolific scorer over the past few weeks, and certainly the hottest player in the early days of the NCAA Tournament, Manek was on a roll and so were the Tar Heels.
But when his left elbow raised high and swung back hitting Jeremy Sochan in the head, Manek’s time in that game was over. After a few minutes of reviewing the film, the officials charged Manek with a flagrant 2 foul, and he was ejected from the game. He knew it was coming.
“Yeah, I think so,” Manek said during a press conference at the Smith Center on Tuesday afternoon. “Any time something like that happens above the shoulders, it gives you that stress right then and there. It was one of those things.”
It didn’t seem like a seismic shift in the game would occur as a result. In fact, the incident and the 6-foot-9 Oklahoman’s ejection at the time was likely going to be a footnote in most postgame write-ups and reports.
But as UNC’s 25-point lead it had when Manek was banished to the locker room with 10:08 remaining whittled away, the call loomed larger. And as the Tar Heels lost Caleb Love to fouls with 6:15 left in regulation and ultimately lost the lead entirely, the stress meter for everyone in the program and fan base was at an all-time high. And then there was Manek’s stress.
“Definitely up there,” he said. “Especially with the lead we had and not being able to have anything to do with holding that lead and finishing the game out.”
So, Manek, who scored 26 points in 28 minutes, and had piled up 17 points in just more than a seven-minute stretch before the incident, felt as helpless as humanly possible sitting in the locker room with Eric Hoots, Carolina’s Director of Operations, because there was nothing he could do to help his team.
And as the lead slipped away, Manek felt more responsible. Equally frustrating was that he couldn’t even watch the game like everyone else.
“It was pretty stressful,” he said. “So, we didn't have the TV feed. We had the Jumbotron feed. So, when the play was still happening, we were watching the replay of the play before. So, we didn't know was going on. We could hear the crowd. It was stressful all the way around.”
Yet, the eighth-seeded Tar Heels (26-9) found a way to knock out the defending national champions and top seed in the East Region, winning, 93-86, in overtime.
An hour and 12 minutes, and when his teammates darted through the doorway into the locker room where Manek had just spent more time than he ever could have imaged and certainly wanted, they embraced him one-by-one.
“It was unbelievable,” Manek said. “It wasn’t unbelievable with the loss of the lead, but it was unbelievable how they played in overtime, stepped up and hit big shots.”
With those big shots and defensive stops, Manek and the Tar Heels march on. A scary sequence for sure, but they survived and will now face UCLA in the Sweet 16 on Friday night in Philadelphia.
It appeared Carolina was a lock to move as it led by 25 when Manek was tossed from the game, then it seemed like an impossibility. But they are there, and in time, the ejection will truly be just a footnote on the season.
Brady Manek Tuesday Presser
