Here is a news report that sums up Marcus Paige's anguish:
SAN ANTONIO — The shaking wouldn’t
stop. The tears had come to an end, but Marcus Paige kept shaking as he sat in
a corner of North Carolina’s locker room, reliving the moment over and over. The player who did more than anything
to get the Tar Heels this far sat there and blamed himself for the end of their
season, shivering like the notion seemed to chill him to his very core. The
idea was preposterous. Paige was North Carolina’s best player, one whose
ability to score when the Tar Heels desperately needed him helped turn around a
season that at one point looked very much headed in the wrong direction. And yet he couldn’t shake the mistaken
notion he’d let them all down with an utterly uncharacteristic turnover at the
end of Sunday’s 85-83 loss to Iowa State. The same thought kept going through
Paige’s mind. “You’re thinking about the play that just cost you your season 20
seconds earlier,” Paige said. “It’s hard to describe.”
That play came with 31 seconds left, the
score tied and the teams going back and forth, shot after shot. After a Naz
Long 3-pointer made it 81-81, Paige walked the ball up the court and North
Carolina started what James Michael McAdoo called a standard offensive set. On
the right wing, Paige curled around a McAdoo screen and cut into the lane. The
Cyclones had been fighting through screens all night, but 6-foot-6 Melvin Ejim
switched off McAdoo and onto Paige this time, so when Paige jumped as if to
shoot, Ejim had a hand in his face. Already in the air, Paige looked to pass. McAdoo,
expecting Paige to shoot, was getting into position for a rebound.
Paige, losing altitude, had nowhere to go
with the ball.
His pass attempt grazed McAdoo’s
fingertips. Ejim picked it up and threw a home-run pass to DeAndre Kane. North
Carolina went from playing with the lead to playing from behind, a scenario
that proved fatal when Kane slashed past J.P. Tokoto for the winning basket
with 1.6 seconds to play.
The Tar Heels had been ahead by eight
only a few minutes earlier, and Paige had an open look at a 3-point attempt
that would have run the lead to 11. Even after the miss, Paige said the Tar
Heels thought they had the game under control. But the Cyclones couldn’t miss,
making seven of their final eight shots to close out the win.
“At the end of the day, we had a chance
to win,” Paige said. “We had possession, we had the ball, we had the ball in my
hands with James Michael setting a screen. That’s worked out for us all year.”
Paige took a couple quick breaths. “I
just didn’t make the play,” he said, his voice trembling. “My teammates trust
me in that situation. I’ve come through for them a lot. If I had that play a
thousand more times, I’d be confident of making that play a thousand times
again. I’m sure my teammates would feel the same way.”
That belief was shared by Iowa State
coach Fred Hoiberg, who in the process of game-planning against the Tar Heels’
final play that never happened, was only concerned with one player: Paige. “We
felt he would probably get the shot,” Hoiberg said. Hoiberg knows. North Carolina didn’t lose because of Marcus
Paige. It would never have been in this position without him.
“He’s the heart and soul of our team,”
McAdoo said. “We’ll live with that.”
Paige can’t stop thinking about one
play. If he remembers anything from this game, from this season, it should be
those 12 words from McAdoo.
You just have to feel for the guy!!
 |
| Marcus Paige (#5) takes a shot over an Iowa State player while Kenendy Meeks (#3) looks on |
No comments:
Post a Comment