MEMPHIS, Tenn. _ They will tell stories about The Shot for a long time _ Luke Maye rising from the left wing, about 18 feet away, and delivering one of the greatest March moments in North Carolina's long, celebrated basketball history.
People will talk about where they were, who they were with, how they celebrated when it went in, giving UNC a 75-73 victory against Kentucky in the South Regional championship on Sunday, sending the Tar Heels to the Final Four for the 20th time. That's what everyone will remember.
And yet there were other moments ...
Like Stilman White taking Malik Monk off the dribble in the first half and finishing with a reverse layup. Monk is a sure-thing one-and-done, a soon-to-be NBA millionaire. White, meanwhile, is a 24-year-old senior who's looking for a job. He recently made himself a LinkedIn page.
There were moments like Theo Pinson's late free throws _ four of them in the final 3 { minutes. Before the first of those, he stepped to the line with three minutes, 22 seconds left, UNC trailing by a point. After he made those two free throws, the Tar Heels never trailed again.
There was Joel Berry playing through pain, and ignoring it. He willed a shot to go in, off the backboard, with a little less than two minutes to play, and UNC's lead grew to five.
There were Kennedy Meeks' rebounds. Seventeen of them.
And Pinson's floor slap when the intensity became too much to contain. And there was Justin Jackson, the stoic junior not known for his emotional outbursts, talking his way down the court at one point in the first half. It was a jarring scene, in some ways, because it was so uncommon. Jackson doesn't talk much on the court.
Yet here he was, talking in the first half after making a shot over Monk, who'd scored 47 points in Kentucky's 103-100 victory over the Tar Heels on Dec. 17. Jackson bobbed his head, nodded. He clapped. He kept talking, and nobody could ever remember anything like it, as reserved as Jackson normally is.
It was, Jackson said later, "just a little friendly banter."
"You know, Malik is a great player," he said. "And for me, I was assigned the duty of trying to slow him down a little bit, and so you can get fired up a little bit. That's rare for me, but at this stage and at this point of the season, I feel like there's really nothing that you should keep in."
And so UNC didn't hold anything in, whether it was emotion or energy or anything else. Roy Williams even called a timeout with five minutes to play, after Kentucky had taken a five-point lead. That was uncharacteristic for Williams, who recently detailed his timeout philosophy in an entertaining rant.
This was uncharacteristic, too: a zone defense. UNC employed it late.
Both of those things worked. The timeout. The zone. After the timeout, UNC scored the next 12 points. The Tar Heels led by seven with 54 seconds to play. It wasn't over, still. Monk found space.
And when there wasn't much space, he created enough of it. Monk made one 3-pointer with 39 seconds left, cutting UNC's lead to a point. He made another 3 with nine seconds left, with Jackson and Maye in his face.
"Luke, and I were right there," Jackson said later. "And so sometimes you've got to tip your hats to guys like that, that hit shots like that. And very soon, he will be making a whole lot of money."
But Monk will not be playing another college game this season (or, likely, any other season). Jackson will. Maye will. UNC's season continued because of the late theatrics on Sunday, but also because of those little, smaller moments that will be lost to history.
The Tar Heels, it turned out, needed White's layup early in the first half, after Berry had limped off the court. They needed every one of Pinson's late free throws. And they needed Jackson's 19 points, and every ounce of energy he expended on defense, chasing Monk, shadowing him throughout.
"This is probably the worst I've felt after a game in a long time," Jackson said, describing his fatigue, after guarding Monk. "He always moves. And so for me, I tried to just stay on his hip. And I just tried to limit his touches as much as possible."
And even then, Jackson said, "Sometimes you've just got to hope that he misses."
UNC hoped, twice, that Monk would miss during the final 40 seconds. He didn't. Those two 3-pointers gave Monk half of his 12 points. Which meant that for 39 minutes, Monk accounted for only six points against UNC, after what he did in that game in Las Vegas in December.
Jackson played more than any UNC player, 38 minutes, and spent about half of them sticking by Monk's side. Berry played for 33 minutes, about 27 of them on two bad ankles instead of only one. In the locker room afterward, neither one of them seemed to have anything left.
They sat in front of their lockers, exhausted. Maye stood nearby, a mob of cameras surrounding him. He'd made the shot, and that's what everyone will remember _ the moment that will endure. There were others, though, smaller ones, destined to fade from memory, that made Maye's shot possible.
