For Heels, their long-awaited shot for redemption
GLENDALE, Ariz. — He has had the image on the screen saver of his phone since the start of the NCAA Tournament. Theo Pinson has a towel over his bowed head as he sits slumped in a locker room that could have passed for a morgue after Villanova’s Kris Jenkins buried that last-second 3 and North Carolina’s dreams along with it.
They have waited one long year for this night, one long year to exorcise the haunting ghosts, and only 40 minutes and Gonzaga stand between them and that One Shining Moment they have relentlessly chased with a Jordanesque drive since that fateful night left them devastated.
“You could try to act like you don’t remember last year, but you’ll be lying to yourself. ... It definitely gives you extra drive of ‘We gotta finish it,’ ” Pinson, a junior guard, said.
“I know I look at my screen saver every day since the tournament started,” Pinson said, “and it shows me the moment I felt after that game. I remember that feeling like it was yesterday. I don’t want that feeling ever again.”
Pinson has not watched a replay of last year’s championship game. Senior forward Isaiah Hicks watched it several days later. Coach Roy Williams has not watched it.
“I really have not gone to bed every night thinking about that game,” Williams said. “I’ve gone to bed every night trying to think how I could coach this team to the best of my ability.”
Redeem Team trying desperately to become a Dream Team.
“Now that we’re here,” Pinson said, “I feel like, ‘Daggone, just play.’ I mean, this is what we’ve been waiting on. ... I’m ecstatic to see how we’re gonna play, and I’m just ready for the ball to go up.”
Sean May has been on both sides of One Shining Moment. He was the player most responsible for the thrill of victory on North Carolina’s 2005 national championship team that defeated Illinois 75-70.
He is Williams’ director of player personnel and a living, breathing reminder of what it means to be a champion in Dean Smith and Michael Jordan’s Chapel Hill.
“The thing you always try to remember is all the guys who came before you, and guys that didn’t have the opportunity to play on this level and to win a championship,” May told The Post. “They’re just as much a part of it as the guys out there on that floor. You play for the name on the front, that’s something we’ve always preached, and it’s something that this family has always been about — each other.”
May, who was Most Outstand- ing Player of that Final Four with 26 points and 10 rebounds in the title game, also eloquently verbalized the dark side of One Shining Moment, which he knows all too well after last season.
“It’s a feeling of desperateness,” May said. “You don’t know what to do. I’ve never had it. You walk in the locker room. ... It’s almost disbelief. How did we end up here? What did we do? How did we not make a play at the end? And then just the abruptness of the ending. ... That’s the thing that I think hopefully is in the back of their heads. But it’s two totally different teams. Just because you have that feeling doesn’t mean we’re gonna come out on top. You gotta play.”
It is a testament to Williams, to
Justin Jackson and Joel Berry III and Kennedy Meeks and the others that North Carolina has made it back to the championship game.
“A lot of it has to do with the experience, being there, going through it, the drive,” May said. “Justin could have went pro last year, and who knows what would have happened? Joel put his name in and he thought about it. I think they wanted a sense of closure that I think we all wanted, because of the abruptness in which it all ended last year.
May, a 6-foot-9, 260-pound man among boys back in the day who relishes the sumo match inside between Meeks and Przemek Karnowski, texted the entire team the morning of the semifinal victory over Oregon.
“And just told ’ em how extremely proud of ’em I am to be able to go through this with ’em, and the toughness that they showed this year to get back here,” May said. “And I told ’em I loved them. And ‘There’s an army of former players out here that want to see you go out there and do what your destined to do.’ ”
On Aug. 22, Williams gathered the Tar Heels at his home and told them they had the right stuff to win a title.
“I’m a firm believer that we’ve been preparing for this for an entire year,” May said. And now they’re back. “We’ve dreamed about this since we got off that plane back in North Carolina from the national championship last year,” Pinson said. “Of how we wanted to get back to Phoenix and see if we could do it again. And now we got a chance.
“We’re just ready to play.”