CHARLOTTE - With one free throw left after a two-shot foul, Ven-Allen Lubin stepped to the line with a chance to tie the game at 72-all against Duke with 4.1 seconds remaining. North Carolina found itself on the verge of a 24-point comeback with the potential to punch its ticket to the ACC Tournament final.
As Lubin prepared for his second foul shot, Jae'Lyn Withers mistimed his release, stepping into the paint before the free throw, resulting in a lane violation. It gave the Blue Devils possession of the basketball, where freshman Kon Knueppel would knock down two free throws to give Duke the 74-71 win.
After the loss, both Jae'Lyn Withers and Hubert Davis spoke to the media, addressing the lane violation and what ensued shortly after.
Q: Hubert, a lot of the players said they don't put this on Jae'Lyn [Withers]. It seems like you standing here with him, you feel the same way?
HUBERT: "We're a team. It's the University of North Carolina basketball team. We win together, we lose together, and the great thing about this group is we do it together. I didn't think I could be more proud of the group than I was before this game, but I lied to them, I am. It's a blessing and an honor, and I think Jesus everyday that I'm their head coach."
Q: There's so many tiny, little things that go wrong in a basketball game, win or lose. This just happened to happen at that specific moment. That happens five minutes earlier [and] people aren't talking about it. What do you say to the people that are going to fixate on something like that?
HUBERT: "Well, I mean everyone has an opinion, but there's so many....one of the things I say is 'we all make mistakes.' I'm an imperfect person so that qualifies me to be an imperfect coach. There's 50,000 mistakes I make every day as a person and as a coach. Everything is filtered through what's in the best interest of this team and in this program. There's so many things in the game that we did today well and some things that we didn't do well that took us to the point where we fell three points short."
Q: Jae'Lyn, what happened on the free throw line there when Vin was taking the second one, and can you tell use what you're feeling as you walked off [and] had the towel over your head, obviously looked very upset?
WITHERS: "I guess you could say I just kind of mistimed the shot. I was trying to make sure I crash [the boards] hard to secure a rebound in case he did miss. The emotions following was just a sense of, I'd say, disbelief. Following that, me of course upset with the end result."
HUBERT: "We're not here without J-Wit. The run that we've made over the last month and a half, it's because of our team, but you can also directly point towards J-Wit and just what he's done for us on both ends of the floor and just changed this team completely. We're not even sitting here [in the] semifinals playing Duke without Wit. He's just been a huge part of our team and I love them to death."
Q: Some of the guys were saying what Coach (Davis) just said, it's not on you [and] there's a thousand things that go wrong in a game. How do you feel now as opposed to maybe how you felt a half hour ago? And is it going to take time to process or there's so much of the game to be processed [and] that's just one small thing like I was saying a minute ago?
WITHERS: "No, I mean it's definitely been processed. It's definitely been processed as far as I guess moving forward or I guess thinking back on it [and] think back on it is kid of hard to really let it go in one ear and out the other or move on to the next thing just again given the end result. I'd say like Coach Davis said, I mean not too pleased about the end result, but I'm definitely proud of this team. We've progressed game after game regardless of the end result and I definitely think that we're still progressing."
Q: Have you every been called for that? You've played basketball a long time. Do you ever remember having that call?
WITHERS: "It's rare. Definitely rare. I usually time that pretty good."
Q: Standing here with Coach Davis, you have your arm around his shoulder. What does it mean to have him there [and] here with you in this moment as support?
WITHERS: "It means extremely a lot, extremely a lot. Going from trying to figure it out as far as you know where I fit in or how I can necessarily see myself getting on the court, getting those minutes to actually playing a lot more [and] our relationship growing on and off the court means a lot to me."
Q: A lot of guys were very positive about the possibilities of the season continuing. Was that your message to the guys that this is an NCAA Tournament team and look forward ot next week?
DAVIS: "One of the things that I'm so proud of is... those are good questions and those are questions that have been asked to myself, to the players for roughly a month and a half. For them to, in the midst of those questions, be able to focus on the preparation and practice and [to] play, focus on whatever is real in regards to whomever we're playing that particular week and to be able to do that basically for, to play must-win games for a month and a half, and in that stretch, they've actually played the best that they've played all season. That's another example of why I'm so proud of this team."
