2nd Quarterfinal - 2004 ACC Tournament Men's Basketball

Greensboro Coliseum

Greensboro, NC

Mar 12, 2004

North Carolina Tar Heels vs Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets

North Carolina came into the ACC Tournament with a record of 18-9 and ranked 16th nationally. The Tar Heels were the 5th seed in the tournament. North Carolina ended the regular season with a loss at Duke by 5 points. This was Roy Williams first season as head coach at North Carolina. Williams was an assistant coach at North Carolina under Dean Smith from 1978 to 1988. He left North Carlina in 1988 to take the head coaching job at Kansas. He stayed there until he returned to North Carolina in 2003 to take over as head coach.

Georgia Tech came into the ACC Tournament with a record of 22-8 and ranked 14th nationally. The Yellow Jackets were the 4th seed in the tournament. Georgia Tech ended the regular season with a three game winning streak which included wins at Clemson, at Duke, and at home against Florida State. Paul Hewitt, the head coach of the Yellow Jackets, was in his 4th season as head coach at Georgia Tech. This was the Yellow Jackets first 20-win season under Hewitt. The last time Georgia Tech had won more than 20 games going into the conference tournament was in 1990 when they entered the ACC tournament with 21 wins under their belt.

The Yellow Jackets scored the first 3 points of the game but the Tar Heels quickly came back and the score was tied at the first TV timeout, 7-7. North Carolina played better ball than Georgia Tech leading up to the second TV timeout, outscoring the Yellow Jackets by five, at which point the score was 16-11. North Carolina extended their lead out to 11 at one point but the score was 28-19 in their favor at the third TV timeout. North Carolina looked better prepared for this game up to this point. I'm not sure what it is but they seemed to have a game plan, where as Georgia Tech did not. Something changed after the the third TV timeout. Georgia Tech started scoring and North Carolina stopped. The Yellow Jackets outscored the Tar Heels by 12 in the last 8 minutes of the first half. Georgia Tech was in the lead and in control at the half when the score was 39-42 in their favor.

North Carolina quickly tied up the game in the opening minute of the second half. It stayed close until Georgia Tech scored 10 unanswered points and took a 7-point lead. North Carolina was still down by 5 at the first TV timeout when the score was 49-54. The Yellow Jackets held on to the lead despite the fact that one of their players (BJ Elder) twisted his ankle badly. He had to leave the game for some medical attention but at the second TV timeout Georgie Tech was still leading with the score 54-61. 

Elder returned to the game after the second TV timeout of the 2nd half. The Yellow Jackets continued to outscore the Tar Heels and at the third TV timeout they were up by 11 when the score was 60-71. North Carolina started to take control after the third TV timeout. They outscored Georgia Tech 14-4 in the next four minutes of the game, at which point Paul Hewitt had seen enough and called time out. The Yellow Jackets were still in the lead but the score was 74-75.

Georgia Tech, after the timeout scored two to stretch out their lead to 3 but North Carolina came back and hit a 3-point shot to tie the game up. The Tar Heels then stole the ball and hit a basket to take the lead 79-77. Georgia Tech came back and tied it up again 79-79 with two free throws and two and a half minutes left in the game. North Carolina took the lead again 81-79 with a couple free throws but the Yellow Jackets came back and scored another basket to tie it up 81-81 with a minute and a half left in the game.

The score did not change but possession went back and forth. Sean May of the Tar Heels went to the line to shoot a couple free throws with 10 seconds left in the game. He hit one to put the Tar Heels up 82-81. The Yellow Jackets, after a controversy over how much time should be on the clock, inbounded the ball and scored a basket with less than 2 seconds left in the game to win it 82-83.

That was one hell of a game. The ending was intense. North Carolina went home to wait and see where they would get seeded in the NCAA tournament. They won their first round game in the NCAA tournament but lost in the second round. Georgia Tech advanced to play Duke in the semi-finals. They lost that game by 14 points. The Yellow Jackets played in the NCAA tournament where they did quite a bit of damage. They advanced all the way to the final game which they lost to Huskies of Connecticut.