Luck with Tar Heels, not the Fighting Irish

North Carolina clung to a slim one-point lead with seven seconds left when sophomore guard Marcus Paige uncharacteristically missed a free-throw attempt.

Sophomore Brice Johnson just barely got a finger on the rebound, and tipped the ball out to Paige, who made one more free throw before clinching a senior night 63-61 win against Notre Dame with a game-ending block.

“I was trying to grab it, but then I just tried to hit it, so they couldn’t get it, and (Paige) ended up getting it,” Johnson said. “It’s just surreal.”

It didn’t need to be that close, but after squandering a 14-point halftime lead, coach Roy Williams said he would take it, even though the game left him feeling both weird and lucky.

“I told them in the locker room and I said on Saturday, ‘To have a really good year, you have to win some games ugly. I’m tired of winning games ugly,’” Williams said. “It’s better than losing games ugly.”

The Tar Heels (23-7, 13-4 ACC) showed the poise in the first half that had jettisoned UNC from the first 1-4 start of Williams’ coaching tenure to a 12-game win streak — its longest ACC winning streak since a perfect ACC regular season in the 1986-87 season.

UNC did an about-face in the second half, allowing Notre Dame (15-16, 6-12 ACC) to erase its halftime deficit with a 22-5 run to open the half.

“They hit us at the beginning of the second half,” Johnson said. “They were a lot more aggressive, so they got more easy baskets, and we were being a little complacent on defense.”

Junior forward Pat Connaughton jumpstarted the Fighting Irish with a basket just 11 seconds after halftime, and Notre Dame was given new life, eventually taking a 47-46 lead with 14:17 left. Connaughton led his team with 17 points and 13 rebounds.

If not for a nearly eight-minute scoring drought midway through the second half, the Fighting Irish might have stolen one from UNC. Stopgap baskets from Johnson and Nate Britt kept the Tar Heels from falling behind by more than three, and McAdoo wrestled back the lead from Notre Dame with back-to-back jumpers with just fewer than four minutes left.

McAdoo, who led UNC with 14 points and nine rebounds said the team showed a trait it didn’t have early in ACC play — resilience.

“This is a game we might not have won earlier in the year,” he said. “Didn’t shoot well from the free-throw line, offensive lulls at times. That was something that definitely plagued us earlier in the year.”

Still, regressions in areas such as free-throw shooting and 3-point shooting, where the Tar Heels shot 10-for-22 and 3-for-12, respectively, made the win less satisfying.

“In certain games, you’ve just got to realize that you didn’t deserve to win by your play, by your actions and just by the way that we prepare,” McAdoo said.

“You just really got to realize that we’ve been lucky, I’ll say blessed, to get these last couple wins.”

Even after Johnson’s lucky tip out Notre Dame had a chance that was narrowly thwarted with Paige’s block. Paige said he had a choice between guarding the rim and giving up the 3-point attempt, and he guessed right.

Weird and lucky, that’s all Paige needed to be.

sports@dailytarheel.com