Tobacco Road, meet Tallahassee.
For just the ninth time in the 59-year history of the ACC basketball tournament, a team from outside North Carolina went home with the title, and for the first time in its short history in the league it was Florida State's.
The Seminoles toppled North Carolina 85-82 on Sunday at Philips Arena in a game featuring vicious defensive sequences, cold-blooded 3-pointers and enough drama in the final minute to perhaps make FSU fans, with just one Metro Conference championship before joining the ACC in 1991, forget it didn’t have the same pedigree as its perpetually entitled opponent.
With the win, the Seminoles (24-9) snapped a seven-year string of teams from the Tar Heel state claiming the title.
“I think it’s a great accomplishment just because their history is so rich,” FSU’s Luke Loucks said about Duke and North Carolina, which have combined to win 36 ACC tournament titles. “Not only to beat them, but to have an opportunity to play those teams on this stage and in this game was really important to us.
“It even goes back a couple of years ago when coach Hamilton brought us in. He said, ‘You can really change the culture of Florida State basketball.’ We’re stepping in the right direction of doing that making our mark. We’re not just some random team from Florida. We’re in the thick of things every year.”
Though North Carolina played without the injured John Henson, the two time ACC defensive player of the year, FSU’s Bernard James assumed they would get the Heels’ best shot.
After the Seminoles defeated North Carolina 90-57 earlier this season -- the worst loss in coach Roy Williams’ North Carolina career -- a big, black 33 was written on a white board in the Tar Heels’ dressing room. James and his teammates heard about the motivational ploy.
“They wanted to get back to us,” said James as his teammates ran around grabbing ACC logos and other mementos to take back to Tallahassee. James finished with nine points, six rebounds and five blocks.
James and the Seminoles were waiting for the Tar Heels by beating Miami in the quarterfinals of the tournament and Duke in the semifinals.
North Carolina got its chance at the Seminoles by easily dispatching Maryland in the quarterfinals, the game in which Henson suffered an injury to his left wrist, and then squeaking by North Carolina State in semifinals.
But neither those teams played defense like the Seminoles. Using what James described as a “junkyard”’ mentality and a bench filled with shot-blocking big men and aggressive guards, FSU limited the Tar Heels to 35.1 percent shooting in the second half.
“Every North Carolina fan just thinks it’s about us and it’s not about us,” Williams said. “It’s 50-50, it is half us and half them. They did a great job defensively.”
Still, North Carolina (29-5) kept attacking.
After trailing by as many as 16 in the first half and by eight with 3:34 left, the Tar Heels finally cut the Seminoles’ lead to one, 83-82, on a 3-pointer by Kendall Marshall with 30.1 seconds left. The fans in light blue roared.
The basket capped the most intense sequence of the game. Twice North Carolina grabbed offensive rebounds, first by John Michael McAdoo and later by P.J. Hairston, only for James to emphatically block their shots. However, the Seminoles couldn’t gather possession or keep the Tar Heels off the boards and Marshall made them pay.
Though North Carolina got the points, a valuable 47 seconds drained off the clock.
Forced to foul, Marshall grabbed Okaro White, who failed to hit the first free throw in the one-and-one situation. North Carolina's Tyler Zeller grabbed the rebound.
Marshall tried another 3-pointer but missed. Deividas Dulkys grabbed the rebound for FSU, was fouled and hit both free throws to give the Seminoles a 85-82 lead with 3.9 seconds left.
Following a timeout, Zeller got the ball to Hairston standing at the half-court line. He called the Heels’ last timeout with 3.3 seconds left to set up their last hope.
Zeller inbounded the ball to Hairston, but his 3-pointer crashed into the rim, preserving the Seminoles’ first title and adding a bit of garnet and gold to a history colored mostly blue.
“I’m sure as time goes on, it will start to sink in and maybe there is validation out there that I’m really not thinking about,” said FSU coach Leonard Hamilton, who became the first African-American coach to win the ACC tournament. “For me, I wanted to just go out and focus on this particular game and the talent we had today. As we were going through the game, I just wanted my guys to give their best shot, give all they had in this particular game. And then if there is some type of recognition or some type of status we are supposed to receive, you guys will decide that.”
