New and old collide in ACC finals
Mar 14, 2009
Danny Green was a center of attention in the North Carolina locker room, and not for the best of reasons. He had just missed the final, forced jumper in a scramble to stave off a rare Tar Heel defeat, culminating a personal shooting performance as painfully ineffective as could be imagined. “I couldn’t find the basket these past couple of days,” Green said flatly. “It was really rough for me. But the season’s not over.”
Talk about your lost weekends: For UNC’s two games in the ACC Tournament, the 6-6 wing made only 3 of 25 shots, one of 12 from 3-point range, the sort of feckless shooting that felled Wake Forest in the quarterfinals against Maryland. Yet, in the aftermath of UNC’s 73-70 loss to Florida State in the semifinals, ending a bid for a third straight conference championship for the Heels, Green patiently and thoughtfully answered every question thrown his way.
At times during the tense, closely-fought semifinal, as Green missed point-blank layups and wide-open jumpers, it seemed only a matter of time until the ordinarily clutch, 49 percent shooter would taste success. But that time never came. Eventually, of course, failure began to generate its own gravitational force.
“I just wasn’t looking for my shot as much as I usually do, I wasn’t as aggressive as I usually am,” Green admitted. “I was really trying to get everybody else involved, but if I was open I was going to shoot the ball. I was going to be a threat. I’m not going to be out there on the court and not be a threat on offense.”
The senior contributed as he could – on defense, with rebounds, as an integral cog in a larger effort. Games are not won or lost by a single player, anyway. Handicapped by Green’s shooting woes, crucial missed free throws by Wayne Ellington, a late steal in the lane from Tyler Hansbrough, and most especially by the absence of 2009 ACC Player of the Year Ty Lawson, the Heels nevertheless fought to the wire before falling to 28-4.
“There’s no tomorrow now,” coach Roy Williams said. “The next time you feel this way at the end of a game, you’re done.”
The Florida State contingent basked at the other end of the emotional spectrum after improving to 25-8 and reaching the finals for the first time since joining the conference in 1992. The win over Carolina was another first for FSU in five tries in ACC Tournament competition.
“This feels so good,” said giddy guard Derwin Kitchen, a 22-year-old sophomore who hit a vital pair of free throws on a one-and-one opportunity with 15.7 seconds left. “This is about one of the best feelings in the world, because a lot of people (weren’t) even thinking we were going to make it this far. And for us to come out and prove that we could play with the best, it feels good, man.”
The UNC-FSU game figured to match offense versus defense, with the high-scoring, top-ranked Tar Heels colliding with an FSU squad that boasts the league’s best perimeter defender in Toney Douglas and its best interior presence in Solomon Alabi, a 7-1 freshman.
Alabi, a Nigerian who discovered the game at an NBA outreach camp at age 16, and was himself later discovered by Florida State, sat out last season with a leg problem but immediately became the ACC’s top shotblocker in 2009. The son of a sundry store owner and a retired policeman is graceful, athletic, and under control, and could quickly emerge – assuming he stays in college for another year or two – as one of the most dominant post defenders in conference history. Certainly the ACC hasn’t seen his like in years.
Alabi proved a formidable presence inside for FSU, and leapt out to contest a key 3-point try by Ellington as the final seconds wound down. Ellington led UNC with 24 points, hitting 4 of 6 shots from long range before his final miss and Green's last, desperate attempt.
But the central figures in the drama were Hansbrough, last year’s MVP, who finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds, and a game-high five steals, and FSU’s Toney Douglas, who finished second in this year’s MVP voting behind Lawson.
Hansbrough was relentless, as usual, fighting his way for six offensive rebounds against Florida State’s covey of big men. But Douglas, who grew up in the Atlanta area, made himself at home at the Georgia Dome for the second straight game. His 52 points in wins over Georgia Tech and UNC, 27 against the Heels, were the most ever scored in an ACC Tournament by an FSU player.
“Everybody on this team, we’ve got our player of the year,” Kitchen said. “I’m pretty sure everybody knows who the player of the year is, really. Toney Douglas, he carried us the whole year, man. I can’t say enough about him.”
Florida State, the fourth seed, earned the right to face Duke, which outlasted Maryland 67-61 in the second semifinal. The Terrapins, erratic for much of the year, drew heavy criticism for coach Gary Williams. The seventh-seeded Terps entered the ACC Tournament supposedly on the NCAA bubble, causing Williams to supply players with T-shirts that said simply, “Win Two.” The team complied, defeating N.C. State and Wake to push its win total to 20.
For Duke, this is the 10th visit to the finals in the past dozen years, but the first since 2006. The third-seeded Blue Devils have twice defeated FSU this season, including 10 days ago at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
