Hoyas Come Full Circle

Meantime, there was something clingy about the Hoyas, they just seemed to barely hang on, like a man on the face of a cliff, while the Tar Heels tried to peel their fingers back, one by one.

"We just stuck with our stuff," Jeff Green said.

Little by little, the game turned ugly for the Tar Heels. As the Hoyas' defense clamped down, the Tar Heels missed 23 of 25 shots over the final stretch and including overtime. They made just one field goal in the last 7 minutes 19 seconds of regulation, a fact that Coach Roy Williams would later partly attribute to their shot selection, about which he was "not ecstatic," he said. Suddenly, it was the Hoyas who looked like the superior team.

Emphasis on that last word. With this game, the Hoyas carved out their own enduring legacy. A quarter century from now, the most indelible memory of these Hoyas will be of their impeccable teamwork, their collective restraint, and rigorous method. While they have plenty of star power in players such as Green and center Roy Hibbert, their greatest attribute is the fact that all of them are valued and vital parts. Five starters were in double figures, and they had 26 assists on 38 field goals, and even those statistics fail to take into account the contributions of reserves Jeremiah Rivers or Patrick Ewing Jr., who got the game's most important rebound. No matter what happens now, whether they win or lose in Atlanta, they are already one of the most memorable teams in school history.

"When you do it the way we do the whole game, five guys working with each other, it's kind of hard to defend," Green said. "We stick together like we did the previous games and today, we can beat a lot of teams."

As the final seconds ticked away in overtime, John Thompson Jr. sat wordless at the press table, where he was commentating on the radio.

"I went deaf for the last five minutes," he said. "I was just thinking, 'They're gonna do this, they're gonna do this.' "

As the victory celebration began, one by one the Hoya players jogged over to shake hands with and hug the man who had taken the Hoyas to their last Final Four, all those years ago.

Said Green, "We had to show respect to the guy who paved the way for us."