WASHINGTON — The winner of the North Carolina-Virginia ACC tournament championship was all but guaranteed to be one of the No. 1 seeds when the NCAA tournament field comes out Sunday night. The loser … was not.
But someone had better be thinking hard about it. The Tar Heels, winners Saturday in one of the most heart-racing, soul-satisfying 61-57 games you’ll ever see, are as good as advertised. And they had to play like maniacs in the second half to get past Virginia.
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Roy Williams thinks the Cavaliers should join them on the No. 1 line. Yes, there’s definitely a dose of the usual conference fraternal love involved, but he gushed about the vanquished opponent almost as much as he did his own team.
"I do think Virginia deserves one as well, I really do," he said. “They’ve had a big-time run this entire season." Which, of course, included the 79-74 win in Charlottesville on the next-to-last Sunday of the regular season.
Virginia, which won the 2014 ACC tournament, went into this tournament ranked fourth in the country. North Carolina, which edged the Cavaliers for first in the regular season standings, was seventh. A Tar Heels team that had practically cruised into the final had to sweat bullets to win it.
Williams thinks Virginia should take a back seat to no team. He even dusted off a comparison to the classic Ali-Frazier fights to motivate the players, and it wasn’t just a ploy.
"We thought it would be that kind of game," he said, "because we have the greatest respect for Virginia’s program. Tony (Bennett, their coach) is one of the giants, getting bigger and bigger in the coaching profession, and what he’s done with the Virginia program is off the charts."
Regular-season Big East champion and potential No. 1 seed Villanova lost earlier in the day. That guarantees nothing for Virginia on Selection Sunday, or for anyone else.
But it’s worth thinking about.
"I’m not the one to judge," said Virginia forward Anthony Gill. "I think two of the better teams in the nation played tonight. I’d say both teams are two different styles, and they competed to the best to their ability, and they came out on top this time."
Added Malcolm Brogdon, the league player of the year: "I think we showed we can compete with that team earlier in the season; we showed we can beat them. Tonight they were the better team overall, but hopefully we’ll get another shot at them. We’ll continue to learn from this and move on."
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For North Carolina, Joel Berry played the game of his life at both ends, finishing with 19 points, locking down London Perrantes, one of the stars of Virginia’s semifinal win over Miami, and winning tournament MVP.
Marcus Paige, the offensive centerpiece of the Tar Heels' semifinal rout of Notre Dame, wasn’t nearly as hot shooting but was even hotter guarding Brogdon. Paige held him scoreless for 13 excruciating second-half minutes, when North Carolina broke the white-knuckler of a game open.
"To win playing their game in the 50s and 60s — we talk about being able to win in the 90s and being able to win in the 50s," Paige said. "We were able to do that today by gritting it out, being tough defensively."
If the two powerhouses didn’t bring out the absolute best in each other in the final, they came pretty close. North Carolina got the ultimate reward.
Virginia earned the right to be considered for one of their own.