Paige finds his shot just when N.C. needs it

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.— Marcus Paige spent two months in an all-out fight with his shooting, trying not to let frustration take over with each spun-offthe-rim floater and rattled-out three-pointer.

The senior’s shot has come around at just the right time for Final-Four-bound North Carolina.

Paige has scored in double figures for six straight games — his longest run all season — and shot 48 per cent from behind the arc in the NCAA tournament. Consider it a welcome (back) addition of a reliable perimeter scorer and shooter to an already deep offence entering Saturday’s national semifinal against Syracuse in Houston.

“I’m just playing more free and more confident and more relaxed,” Paige said Tuesday, “and the ball’s been going in.” Those January and February shooting struggles sunk Paige’s season numbers for the Tar Heels (32-6), the No. 1 seed in the East Region that’s back in the Final Four for the first time since 2009. The slender six-foot-two native of Marion, Iowa, is averaging 12.3 points and shooting just 39.6 per cent, while his free-throw shooting fell from about 86 per cent over his first three seasons to 77.5 per cent this year.

But in the NCAA tournament, he’s averaged14 points while making13 of 27 three-pointers — highlighted by hitting four quick threes on the way to 21 points in the Sweet 16 win against Indiana.

“Sooner or later, it was going to click,” sophomore Joel Berry II said.

The shooting struggles were a head-scratcher for anyone who had watched North Carolina regularly over the past two years, let alone Paige and coach Roy Williams. He had carried the burden of needing to find his shot quickly to get the Tar Heels moving at full speed and carried it well.

As his shot abandoned him, Paige focused on being one of the team’s top wing defenders and on other contributions until he could find it again. And UNC’s offence evolved to run first through six-foot-10 Brice Johnson — named an Associated Press first-team All-American on Tuesday — with Paige in a complimentary role.

That helped the Tar Heels survive Paige’s prolonged slump, which would have been devastating over the past two years. They could be even tougher to slow now that Paige looks like himself again.

“I think he handled it better than anybody I’ve ever seen,” Williams said. “And he believed in what the staff was telling him about how he could still help us and what he was doing to help us. But it was tougher on him than anybody. He’s a perfectionist in about everything does.”