“When you’re in that moment, you’re thinking you’re getting the ball,” Paige said. “I was under the impression I was getting the ball the whole time, and I was ready for it.”
Option 3: Try Paige one last time on the baseline.
“Set another screen for Marcus to go to the corner,” Johnson said. “He’s going to come off the (initial) screen and if they can’t hit him there ... set another screen for him to go to the corner and shoot it.”
The Tar Heels went with the third option, the least flexible of the three, and when Paige caught the ball in the corner he had no choice but to heave up an off-balance desperation shot with two defenders in his face.
With no chance at a clean look, Paige’s shot was long as the seconds ticked off the clock. Game over.
“I saw him open for a split second, made a choice,” said junior forward J.P. Tokoto, who inbounded the pass. “It’s just kind of the way things go. You wish you had the play back.”
Williams, who didn’t hide his disappointment after the loss, said either the Notre Dame defense did its part shutting down Johnson for Option 1, or the Tar Heels simply didn’t run the play correctly. Either way, he wasn’t pleased.
“I need to see it before I can tell you what the crap we did,” he said. “I didn’t like what we did because we didn’t have the patience.”
Now the Tar Heels, 11-4 overall and 1-1 in conference play, head into what some are calling a must-win contest against Louisville on Saturday if they’re to cement themselves as one of the conference’s top contenders.
But on Monday, all Paige could think about was what had just happened.
“We feel like we were the better team,” he said. “It wasn’t like they were the No. 1 team in the country and we were unranked trying to make a miracle happen. We thought we were a team that could compete and win this game nine times out of 10. We just didn’t do it.”
sports@dailytarheel.com
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