Kennedy Meeks overcomes sickness to give Tar Heels extra boost

Greensboro — On the eve of one of the most anticipated matchups of the ACC Tournament, before the team's evening snack, the sickest player on North Carolina's squad headed up to Roy Williams' hotel room in Greensboro ready to make his case. 

Kennedy Meeks, the 6-foot-9 sophomore forward who has been out of commission since Saturday against Duke with flu-like symptoms, had one request on Wednesday night for his Hall of Fame Coach: let him play, his body felt better. 

But Williams wasn't completely convinced. 

"I told him, I said, 'I've got to get the OK from the doctors first,"' he said. "I told him last night, 'I'm not saying I'm not going to play you the whole tournament.' But he hasn't done one drill since the Duke game. Not one live thing. Not one of anything — may have shot free throw over on the side, but I didn't even see him do that." 

The team doctors ended up medically clearing Meeks at 10 a.m. Thursday morning to compete. Then Williams sat on it for a few hours, and eventually gave Meeks the green light to play himself. 

It was the right choice. 

It was Meeks with back-to-back baskets and a momentum-swinging block late in the second half that helped North Carolina (23-10) eliminate Louisville (24-8) from the tournament with a 70-60 win. It was Meeks' 19 minutes and 4-for-9 shooting that Marcus Paige said served as the perfect spurt of energy for UNC's big-men rotation. And it was Meeks' nine points that might have made all the difference in a 10-point victory. 

"Every body is important. You have to have depth at this time of the year. We’re playing back-to-back-to-back so we needed his minutes to help our big-men rotation out," Paige said. "Even if he couldn't give us the full Kennedy Meeks, he's still a big body that can compete and rebound down low. Whatever he could give us today is what we needed."

But from Williams' perspective, perhaps the most important thing Meeks gave can't be counted during the game or printed onto a box score: smart passing. 

"His passing is important to us," Williams said. "Kennedy is probably more important against a pressing team like Louisville than he is against somebody else because he does make good decisions out of bounds."

As for Meeks — who mustered up a 'Let's go boys' during a pregame that saw him both exasperated and sweaty — being out on the court felt right again. But he was the first to admit fatigue took its toll. 

"I was tired — like 320 (pounds) tired," he quipped. "Like high school tired." 

But maybe more importantly, what Meeks took away above anything else was the confidence that Williams believed in him. The trip to his coach's hotel room Wednesday night had been worth it, after all. 

"He put his trust in me," Meeks said. "He felt like I was ready for that situation."

And on Thursday, that he was.