Great Day to be a Tar Heel
The ghosts of North Carolina teams of the past quarter century — the talk of not winning the big game and why — were nowhere to be found at 4:35 p.m. on Memorial Day Monday in the visiting locker room at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Joe Breschi’s last dab, the Cam Newton-inspired dance that made the Tar Heels’ coach Internet famous a week earlier after the program broke a 23-year final four drought, brushed those bad vibes out for another generation.
“Dad’s like the dab guy now,” Breschi’s wife, Judy, said, standing nearby, with three of the couple’s four daughters in toe. They had all just spent time celebrating on the field of the NFL’s Eagles. “I cried … and I cried again,” 10-year-old Lucy said in a stream of consciousness to no one in particular.
Beneath the south end zone seats, a party raged. Most of the 46 members of the 2016 edition of the Tar Heels gathered in the center of the long room, doing a dance of their own, gyrating in unison to house music that would make most DJs proud. Equipment, sweaty white-and-Carolina blue jerseys and other garments were scattered about, soaked by the perspiration of North Carolina’s epic 14-13 overtime win against top-seeded Maryland in an instant classic title game.
“We just won the national championship!” Breschi said, as if he couldn’t believe it.
At his locker, sophomore attackman Luke Goldstock, whose unsportsmanlike conduct penalty with 3.9 seconds left in the fourth quarter nearly cost Carolina the game, felt equal parts shock: “It’s unbelievable.”
To his right, sophomore goalie Brian Balkam had placed the events in perspective. He absorbed an extra-man opportunity shot from Terps midfielder Connor Kelly on the first possession of overtime to his midsection — er, “We’ll call it that,” Balkam said, “I think everyone knows where, though.”
Then a relative unknown, soft-spoken left-handed sophomore from Canada, Chris Cloutier, sniped in a man-up OT winner from 13 yards for his NCAA tournament-record 19th goal. It happened just 32 seconds after Maryland goalie Kyle Bernlohr denied Cloutier after series of stick fakes on the doorstep, with a gravity-defying stop that looked as if Bernlohr netted a striped bass from over his right shoulder. Neither side led by more than two goals after the first quarter. North Carolina battled back from a 13-11 deficit with 7:49 left in the fourth.
“That will go down as one of the best games ever,” Balkam said to Goldstock.
Sure will.
In many respects, the end of the season befitted a topsy-turvy Division I men’s college lacrosse year defined by early-season upsets and parity among the country’s 70 teams. North Carolina was unseeded in the NCAA tournament for only the second time in eight straight postseason appearances since Breschi returned to lead his alma mater ahead of the 2009 season, and started to attract a steady stream of highly regarded recruiting classes.
Until they put together four consecutive wins to claim the program’s first NCAA men’s tournament title since 1991, and make the its first final four since 1993, the Tar Heels had not won more than two games in a row all season. They didn’t have perennial All-Americans like Jimmy Bitter, Joey Sankey, Chad Tutton or Marcus Holman anymore. They became the first unseeded team to win a national title, and the first to win it with six losses during the season.
“There was no talk about North Carolina getting to the final four until, really, we were in the quarterfinals,” Breschi said. “Most years, we’ve been top-five and everyone is talking about it: ‘This is the year.’ That mounts on a kid. Whether they try to avoid it, or not think about it, or feel it, it’s there. This year, it wasn’t. Somebody told me the probability of us winning the national championship when the bracket came out was 3 percent. You talk about no pressure.”
Maybe so, but there was internal determination. Moments large and small ultimately built to the Tar Heels playing the championship-caliber team-ball — “If the ball stays in your stick for more than five seconds, you’re doing something wrong,” offensive coordinator Dave Metzbower told them — that they did in front of 26,749 spectators on the season’s final day.
It started informally last August in the basement of one of the seven off-campus houses on Longview Street in Chapel Hill, N.C., where many North Carolina men’s and women’s lacrosse players live during their time at school. Four months removed from what senior midfielder Patrick Kelly described as an “incredibly embarrassing” 14-7 loss to Maryland in the 2015 quarterfinals that looked over almost as soon as it started, the returning seniors, junior and sophomores aired grievances before a welcome-back night out.
Who do we want to be? Are you all in?
“If not, we don’t need people on this team,” Kelly said. “We’re already not as close to as talented as we were to last year. What’s another player or two?”
It continued in another basement seven months later — this one at a historic hotel in Massachusetts after a 14-9 loss at UMass dropped the Tar Heels’ record to 3-3. Breschi asked the seniors and captains Kelly, short-stick defensive midfielder Jake Matthai, and junior defensemen Austin Pifani and Mark Rizzo to stay behind on the bus back after the game. “What’s going on guys?” Breschi asked.
Redshirt freshman midfielder Mike D’Alessandro, someone who wasn’t even playing, delivered the most powerful statements during the 90-minute, cathartic in-person group chat that followed. D’Alessandro, who had planned to play football at North Carolina too, has undergone four knee surgeries in the last three years, on his left and right ACLs and a meniscus.
Are we going to be like Carolina teams of the past and just not care, and get the same result, or worse, not make the playoffs?
“Watching you guys play soft is terrible,” D’Alessandro said, tears streaming down his face. “I’d die to be on that field, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play again. I don’t see anybody diving to check people, diving for ground balls, bodying people up. It’s making me sick to see you guys take it for granted.”
Pifani poured his heart out about what the Carolina jersey meant. Metzbower steamed in the back of the room, battling the flu.
“We didn’t have any prima donnas anymore after that,” he said.
A tone set, but still much on-field work to be done on a roster that was probably more talented than most realized, with 20 former Under Armour high school All-Americans, and one that despite the unknowns heading into the season, was a preseason top-10 team. Metzbower, he of now seven NCAA titles, continued to bring along converted midfielders Cloutier, who couldn’t beat a short-stick, and right-hander Steve Pontrello on attack — they were the Bitter and Sankey replacements, even though Patrick Kelly admitted feeling angry after filling Bitter’s lefty role all fall, only to be told he’d play midfield in the spring. His quickness was more valuable there. Former scout teamer Brian Cannon later joined the second midfield at Breschi’s request. He soon played on the Tar Heels’ man-up unit and scored three goals in the final four.
Assistant coach Brian Holman worked with Balkam, the hopeful permanent goalie replacement for Kieran Burke, who elected to leave the team in the offseason. Balkam was pulled from what became a key 17-16 win over Duke on April 1, and almost met the same fate in others.
Pifani, the team’s top cover defenseman, and Matthai, the leaders of the defense, clashed at times in recent seasons. “We just didn’t see that both of us wanted it so badly,” Matthai said. The pair of opinionated personalities, one direct and loud and the other usually using a soft touch, were now on the same page. Good thing, because starting close defenseman Zach Powers broke his arm against the Blue Devils and didn’t return until the postseason.
“Why are you going to Carolina? You’re just going to lose for four years.”
That’s talk that freshman Timmy Kelly, Patrick’s younger brother, said he heard about his decision to play at North Carolina. The sons of David and nephews of Bryan, who won titles at UNC in 1989 and 1991, respectively, knew otherwise, though. But even after the watershed post-UMass meeting, when intensity in practice and games picked up and playing time was laid out for all, the Tar Heels didn’t exactly set the lacrosse world on fire. They practiced to a higher standard, but went 5-3 in the next eight games — and although that included a magical comeback from down five goals in the fourth quarter to beat then-No. 1 Notre Dame that gave the Tar Heels’ NCAA tournament hope — the co-ACC regular-season champs also ended April with a 10-7 loss to Syracuse in the ACC semifinals.
“We need to make history. I want to make history!” faceoff man Stephen Kelly, the cousin of Patrick and Timmy and one of the heartbeats of the team, barked after that one. The Tar Heels waited until Selection Sunday nine days later to see if they had a chance.
May 1. North Carolina went dry. No drinking during these playoffs, the captains decreed.
“I came here not to party, not to do drugs, none of that stuff,” said Timmy Kelly, who saw significant time in the title game for a rookie. “We came here to win championships. I think every single person had that in mind. If you didn’t have it in mind, see you later.”
Looking at the 18-team tournament bracket, Breschi noted that if Carolina won its first-round game, which they did 10-9 at Marquette, for the quarterfinals he’d return to Columbus, Ohio, where he worked as Ohio State head coach for 11 years and started a family.
“Lacrosse is supposed to be fun,” Breschi is one to say, and generally he gives off a bubbly, positive vibe. His daughters taught him to dab and the nay nay, too. (“He’s got too much swag,” Pifani said.) He spent a lot of the morning of the championship game bear-hugging players on the fifth floor of their Philadelphia hotel as they headed to breakfast, yelling, “Let’s go!!!!”
But upon arrival in Ohio on May 21, things were different. “I was fine the whole week, but once we got there, it all starts coming back to you,” Breschi said.
Michael Breschi died 12 years ago and is buried just 20 miles north of Ohio State’s iconic Horseshoe, where North Carolina and third-seeded Notre Dame would play the next day. Breschi arranged for Buckeyes head coach Nick Myers, his good friend and former assistant coach, to drive him to visit his son. Holman joined. They stayed for 30 minutes.
Breschi had been back before, to remember his first-born son, killed at age 3 in a tragic accident. In a preschool parking lot, Judy Breschi was buckling one of his siblings into the family minivan when a sport-utility vehicle backed up and struck Michael.
“Thank you for bringing me home and letting me go see Michael,” an emotional Breschi told the team that Saturday night. The next morning at breakfast, Patrick Kelly dedicated to their coach’s son what came next: a 13-9 win over the Fighting Irish that advanced North Carolina to the final four. Breschi broke down in a post-game TV interview. Then he beat Cam Newton at his own game with a locker room dance that a staff member captured on video and went viral.
“Sorry for taking so long,” Breschi texted back to congratulatory messages.
The University of National Champions was fired up. The ’91 team was to be honored at halftime of the championship game, marking the 25th anniversary of the last men’s title win. Thirty-seven of the 39 members made it.
Patrick Kelly answered a phone call that week from his uncle, Bryan, the coach at Calvert Hall (Md.). Nephew heard huffing and puffing. Bryan Kelly was on a run, and had a thought. If the team did not already have plans to fly from Chapel Hill to Philadelphia, he’d coordinate with other proud alums to arrange a charter. No need. “OK, good,” Kelly said. Dennis Goldstein, the 1991 national player of the year, hosted a weekend party in the area.
“It feels like I made the final four,” Sankey said.
Looking back, it feels like a foregone conclusion North Carolina would win two more games after sending the quarterfinal elephant in the room packing.
The first, an 18-13 win over Loyola in the semifinals, certainly came easier than the second. At teh start of overtime, Goldstock was in the penalty box after jostling with Maryland defenseman Michael McCarney. North Carolina was man-down, but players raised their thumbs up on the North Carolina sideline. That’s the gesture Michael Breschi made to his dad when he used to put him to bed, and what North Carolina (and Ohio State) players do each fall at a charity scrimmage at Calvert Hall.
Powers’ swan dive to defend the shot that Balkam stopped on the first possession of OT was “a picture of our season,” D’Alessandro said. And Cloutier’s waist-level lefty rip, off a Mike Tagliaferri skip pass against Maryland’s packed in man-down defense, set off the celebration that marked the final frame. In the most unexpected year, and as Breschi said aloud for days after, North Carolina won the national championship.
