Brice Johnson and JP Tokoto combine for seven dunks in win over Miami

CORAL GABLES, FLA. — It comes too naturally to Brice Johnson for him to fully appreciate its significance. Don’t think he doesn’t enjoy it — he’d be crazy not to — but maybe his vantage point prohibits him from witnessing the impact it can have.

Maybe the best vantage point is courtside, where North Carolina play-by-play announcer Jones Angell sits.

Saturday, with just over four minutes left in UNC’s matchup against Miami, the two of them were practicing their art.

“The Heels up five with the ball,” Angell starts, his voice crescendoing, “And make it seven as Paige drives left of the lane, scoops it to Johnson for the dunk!”

As it often does, it happened too quickly for Angell to capture in the moment, leaving him playing catch-up, balancing the awe with the call.

Johnson held onto the rim for a second after scoring his 11th basket of the night, a career high, yet the same play made it all but impossible for Miami to hang on in the game. That dunk started a 12-4 run to push the Tar Heels’ lead to 11 points, shutting the door and boarding up the windows on the Hurricanes, 73-64.

There’s no question that Johnson’s teammates can appreciate that.

“It really gets us going,” said junior guard Marcus Paige, who finished with 17 points, none of them from dunks. “We like them because they’re high-percentage shots.”

It shows. Johnson connects on 58 percent of his shots. Out of all UNC players with at least 100 attempts, that puts him in second place by one one-thousandth of a point to Kennedy Meeks.

But these high-percentage shots have high-visibility. They’ve got to stand out to the perpetrator himself.

Which dunk was your favorite?

“I’m used to it now. There’s not a favorite.”

How many did you have?

“I didn’t even count.”

Someone did. It was five. J.P. Tokoto, whom Yahoo! Sports recently named the No. 1 college player “who may someday win the NBA dunk contest,” had two of his own.

Four days ago, in a dismal loss to N.C. State University, the pair finished without a single dunk for Angell to chronicle. Before the Miami game, UNC had lost five of its last seven. In those five losses, Johnson and Tokoto, Inc. manufactured just nine slams.

They had seven in Coral Gables.

Tokoto attributes that to a newfound ferocious mentality.

“Sometimes we get too tentative and wait for things to happen,” Tokoto said. “We wait for one guy like Marcus to create something. If we all help him out, it’ll be all right.”

And Saturday afternoon, it definitely was all right. A comfortable win like that — the type that has been so noticeably shy to materialize for UNC as of late — made it easier for Johnson to appreciate his own art.

It made it easier for him to answer the question: does a Brice Johnson dunk generate unadulterated momentum?

“It has and it will continue to,” he said. “It’s something I always do. I’m just used to going up there and dunking it.”

For Johnson, it’s a normality, but for UNC, it’s a necessity.

sports@dailytarheel.com