UNC's Thrilling Win vs. Louisville Proves Heels Have What It Takes to Be Elite

With Marcus Paige making clutch shots like he did on Saturday, North Carolina just might be a Final Four team after all.

In a 72-71 thriller in Chapel Hill, No. 18 North Carolina knocked off No. 5 Louisville in one of the most improbable come-from-behind wins of the 2014-15 college basketball season.

The Tar Heels trailed by 13 with eight-and-a-half minutes remaining. Paige was in the locker room dealing with a foot injury. The fat lady was already warming up her vocal chords.

But North Carolina refused to go quietly into the night.

Paige returned to the game and contributed five points and two assists down the stretch, as the Tar Heels turned a seemingly insurmountable deficit into the type of win that proves they can still be elite—when they want to be.

Paige hit a gorgeous game-winning layup in the exact same situation where he failed multiple times on Monday. Down one in the final minute against Notre Dame, he missed a trio of three-point attempts and a layup to allow the Fighting Irish to escape with a win.

It was becoming an all-too-familiar sight for the preseason All-American.

Last year, Paige was arguably the most clutch player in the entire country until Kentucky's Aaron Harrison started draining game-winning three-pointers in the NCAA tournament. The Tar Heels frequently trailed late in games, but you just knew Paige had something up his sleeve for the final moments.

Until Saturday, that guy was nowhere to be found, and North Carolina had been unable to reach its ceiling without him. Bret Strelow of The Fayetteville Observer provided a likely reason for why Paige hasn't looked like his normal self:

Truth be told, beating Louisville was the first truly impressive thing North Carolina has done this season.

Sure, the Tar Heels had a nice win over Ohio State, but that was a product of sheer dominance in the paint against an undersized team. Wins over UCLA and Florida in the Battle 4 Atlantis don't look anywhere near as impressive now that those teams have a combined 13 losses on the season.

Though all of the attention will focus on the return of Paige's late-game heroics against the Cardinals, this was a team effort from what could and should be one of the best rotations in the country.

Brice Johnson was an absolute ghost early in the second half as Louisville built up its lead, but he had some huge contributions to finish with 11 points and 11 rebounds—unbelievably, it was just his second double-double of the season.

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Kennedy Meeks has been North Carolina's most valuable player all season long, and the big man was all over the stat sheet on Saturday with 13 points, six rebounds, three steals, two blocks and an assist.

He was one of four Tar Heels to score in double figures and one of seven to record at least six points.

That's the type of point distribution we expected from this team way back when it was ranked No. 6 in the nation in the preseason. Much has been made about the nine McDonald's All-Americans at Duke and Kentucky, but the Tar Heels have six of their own—and two other players in Johnson and J.P. Tokoto who have turned out to be pretty doggone good.

As far as sheer athleticism goes, there might not be a better nine-man rotation in the country.

The big X-factor for North Carolina is whether coach Roy Williams can get his boys to give a dadgum.

After all, we're talking about a team that was out-rebounded by Butler 57-40 despite the fact the Bulldogs start a 6'4" small forward and a 6'7" power forward. On the flip side of that coin, the Tar Heels held arguably the best offense in the country (Notre Dame) to just eight points over the final 10 minutes of a heartbreaking loss.

Williams summed it up pretty well in his postgame interview on ESPN with Dick Vitale and Dan Shulman.

"The first part of the second half we were so bad. I knew we would come back, but are we going to have enough against a team like Louisville?"

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It's that kind of fluctuating effort that allows the Tar Heels to trail Louisville by 13 points in a game where Montrezl Harrell finished with just nine points and five rebounds in 38 minutes.

And it's that kind of fluctuating effort that allows them to storm back to beat Louisville in a game where Chris Jones and Terry Rozier both had an O-rating of 115 or better for just the second time this season—the other was the Cardinals' impressive 20-point neutral-court win over Indiana.

Being frustratingly inconsistent is hardly a new phenomenon for the Tar Heels. Last year, they bookended a horrible loss to UAB with wins away from home against Louisville and Michigan State teams that were among the favorites to win the 2014 national championship.

At its best, though, this year's team should be considerably better. Both Paige and freshman Justin Jackson are capable of so much more than they have shown thus far this season, and we're still waiting on Theo Pinson to tap into his potential.

But even without those guys playing anywhere near their peak, North Carolina just beat a legitimate contender for the national championship.

It should only be a matter of time before the Tar Heels are fully back in the conversation for the ACC championship and possibly the national championship.

If, you know, they actually want to be that good.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.