ST. LOUIS — His laugh was a survivor's laugh, breathy and broken. Like a man who'd just narrowly dodged an oncoming train.
"I think it was more the timing," Stilman White explained, "where we'd just got an offensive rebound."
With 46 seconds left in the first half of an absolute catfight with plucky Ohio University, White, North Carolina's freshman guard, found himself open at the top of the 3-point arc. So the kid did what any other Division I point man would do — what the man he was deputizing for, Kendall Marshall, would do. He let fly.
One problem: Stilman White isn't Kendall Marshall. The ball hit the iron and caromed to a Bobcats player. A few feet away, Tar Heels coach Roy Williams fumed.
"YOU DON'T HAVE TO SHOOT!" the coach screamed.
But shoot he did. And you know what? He'd do it again.
"I'm going to be confident taking that shot," White said after the top-seeded Heels escaped with a 73-65 win over Ohio to advance to the NCAA tournament's Midwest regional finals Sunday, and a date with second-seeded Kansas. "I think I'm a pretty good shooter, so if they leave me open for three, I'm going to shoot it and knock it down."
Consider yourselves warned. Because once the dust had settled on the best game, to date, of the 2012 Big Dance, we'd learned three things about the Tar Heels backcourt:
1. You leave Reggie Bullock (17 points, five treys) open at your peril.
2. White (two points, six assists, zero turnovers) is a decidedly better option at the point than Justin Watts (zero points, four rebounds, three turnovers).
3. They're really not the same without Marshall. Not remotely.
The Carolina Blue glass was half — well, it was half-something Friday night.
On the plus side, White and Watts held their own admirably, considering the circumstances. Especially White, a 160-pound true freshman out of Wilmington, N.C., a scrapper who got inside the chest of Ohio's standout point guard, D.J. Cooper, and harassed the snot out of him on the defensive end — Cooper missed eight of his first nine attempts. Tossed off the boat after only a few lessons, White did a whole lot more swimming than sinking.
Williams asked him to play defense, get the ball up the court, then get the heck out of the way. He did all three with aplomb. At his worst, the kid was more than competent, especially for a guy who came in averaging 4.3 minutes per contest.
Trouble is, this is March; elite teams with competent point guards tend to wind up leaving the party early.
North Carolina has arguably the best cadre of big men in college game, but Bracketville, historically, is a guard's town.
Also, the Heels turned it over 24 times.
So, yeah, Marshall's absence was noticed. Just a bit.
"It was not our greatest effort — well, it was not the prettiest effort, by any means," Williams said. "But we got to get some joy in Mudville, because our locker room wasn't as happy as we would like for it to be with (us) being here in the Elite Eight."
Leaning against his locker stall, clutching a smart phone with both hands, James Michael McAdoo looked anything but giddy. Asked to describe the postgame scene inside the Heels' locker room, he replied:
"Relief. Just relief."
The Heels know they can survive without Marshall, their captain, manning the point. But can they advance? Ohio had to scrap and bomb its way back into the game, knowing full well it had no answers for Tyler Zeller (20 points, 22 rebounds) and John Henson (14 points, 10 boards) down low. Kansas has those answers in 6-foot-10 Thomas Robinson and 7-footer Jeff Withey, as well as Elijah Johnson, one of the hottest guards still dancing.
"I think we feel like we got away with one," Zeller allowed. "Ohio played the better game, they hit a lot of shots. I think we just were able to make a lot of plays at the end that made us capable of pulling it out."
Whether they'll make those plays against the Jayhawks, in front of what should be a hostile, pro-Kansas crowd Sunday, remains to be seen. The only thing for certain, at this point, is that Marshall will probably sit for a second straight game. That and the fact that Kansas will have no trouble leaving Stilman White open, no trouble letting him be the one Heel who can beat them on the big stage.
"I hope they do," White countered. "I'd love them to come out and pressure me."
He wasn't smiling when he said it.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
