North Carolina may be the dominant team that nobody thought existed

Marcus Paige sprinted down a Verizon Center corridor late Saturday night, a net around his neck and an ACC champions cap worn backward on his head, his teammates running toward the North Carolina locker room alongside him. “We not done!” Paige bellowed. “We not done, baby!”

A few minutes earlier, the Tar Heels had gathered at midcourt and pogo-sticked up and down with arms locked, joy derived from a championship earned the hard way. The Virginia Cavaliers had not looked over their shoulders at them as they formed a line and exited the court.

Even at the disparate conclusion, the white-knuckle ACC tournament final at Verizon Center left a clear impression: Either one of these leather-tough teams could win the national championship, and if either the Cavaliers or the Tar Heels snip a net on the first Monday in April, they may look back on Saturday night as a moment they learned what it would take.

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Virginia and North Carolina pushed each other for 40 minutes, providing Verizon Center the kind of thrills the building’s primary basketball tenants haven’t all winter. The Tar Heels avenged their loss in Charlottesville two weeks earlier and claimed the ACC championship with a 61-57 victory built on oppressive defense and contested, against all odds, until the final buzzer.

The game delivered in every way a neutral observer could have hoped. The crowd, split between Carolina blue and Virginia orange, erupted at every basket and every stop. Both teams played with hellacious defensive intensity and yet committed six fouls combined in the first half. (Can there be six fouls called in every half this month?) Neither team led by more than four points in the second half until Joel Berry II’s three-pointer put the Heels up five with 5 minutes, 26 seconds left.

North Carolina pushed its lead to nine as Virginia missed 11 consecutive shots, and the Tar Heels’ overwhelming athleticism and size gave the Cavaliers an excuse to fade away. They refused. Mike Tobey’s corner three-pointer slashed the deficit to three with less than a minute remaining, but Virginia could not make stops and the Tar Heels did not comply with missed free throws.