TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — After the game, Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton could only chuckle.
He sat in the post-game press conference with a slight grin to the right side of his face and his left arm slung over the back of the chair beside him.
Hamilton knew Harrison Barnes was going to get the ball with the clock winding down, but there was nothing else his team could have done to prevent him from knocking down the game-winning 3-pointer for North Carolina, sealing the 72-70 win with 3.1 seconds left.
“I just think that was a great play,” Hamilton said. “Obviously you want to try to contest it as well as possible, and I thought Michael (Snaer) did a really good job of contesting it. He made a tough shot. You got to say that was as good as it gets.”
Down one, point guard Kendall Marshall ran down the court and put up a weak layup that Okaro White turned the other way. Marshall received the ensuing in-bounds pass and flipped it to Barnes, who made a rounded turn before making it to the middle of the court.
His eyes oscillated from the clock to his defender before he made his move. Barnes elevated over Snaer and drained the long-range game-winner.
“I didn’t know what they were going to throw at me, I thought they might throw a double team, but when I saw the way they were lined up, I knew I had to take the jump shot,” said Barnes, who finished with 18 points.
But before Barnes continued his late-game heroics, the top-performance award almost went to Derwin Kitchen. Kitchen, the only senior in the Seminoles’ starting lineup for his last game at home, hit two free throws with 18.2 seconds remaining to give FSU (20-9, 10-5 ACC) its first lead of the game since the 15-minute mark of the second half.
Until that point, the game had been one of the most even contests UNC (23-6, 13-2) has played all year.
