By R.L. Bynum
CHAPEL HILL — Seth Trimble felt the truth of it before anyone else did.
As the ball lifted off his fingertips, tilted just slightly by what he later called his “little old man fade away,” a calm certainty settled over him in a rivalry defined by anything but calm.
“I knew it was good,” said Trimble, who held his follow-through as he watched the ball ripple through the net. “I knew it was good the second it left my hand.”
What followed was less than a half-second that will live forever in Carolina program lore. The ball dropped cleanly through the net with 0.4 of a second left, giving UNC its first lead of the game and lifting the No. 14 Tar Heels to a thrilling 71–68 victory over No. 4 Duke on Saturday at the Smith Center.
Trimble signaled it was over by putting his hands next to his head with the “night night” gesture Stephen Curry made famous.
“It’s crazy,” said Trimble, who scored 16 points but only made that one 3-pointer. “It means a lot. I’m getting emotional, but I mean, it’s what I came here for. Moments like this, games like this, and just to be that kind of player for my team.”
If there was any doubt about the history that Trimble made, Theo Pinson cleared it up after giving him a hug in the room where players talk to the media after games.
“You cemented now,” Pinson told Trimble in a manic voice. “You cemented. You’re a legend.”
Trimble admitted that he’d dreamed of the sort of moment he enjoyed against Duke.
“I grew up watching Marcus Paige make clutch play after clutch play. I grew up watching Coby White just get a bucket whenever it was needed,” he said. “To be able to step up in the moment like that and put myself in that history book [is amazing].”
It all came after his senior season appeared to be in jeopardy when he injured his left forearm in November and missing games with a concussion the season before.
“To me, adversity … it’s your greatest friend,” Trimble said. “It’s your greatest supporter. Being able to go through adversity, being able to struggle and being able to overcome it builds you much more than anything else can.
“I know when I get to the next level, it’s gonna be even harder,” Trimble said. “It’s gonna be this all over again. So, the fact I’ve been able to go through this year and really still had that love and honor and blessing for that university …”
Trimble’s transformation from frustrated veteran to rivalry hero was almost too perfect for fiction. Just 42 seconds earlier, he’d committed a turnover when Cameron Boozer stripped him of the ball. The play gnawed at him immediately.
“I was really frustrated with myself,” he said, describing the way doubt and irritation hit him in the moment. But the team needed a stop, and he forced his focus forward. “We’ve been here before. We were just very ready to get a stop.”
UNC got it, and suddenly the game belonged to Trimble again. He created history that will live on alongside big shots against Duke by Walter Davis in 1974 and Marvin Williams in 2005, as well as Luke Maye’s shot to beat Kentucky in the 2017 NCAA Elite Eight.
Trimble remembers sitting on his sofa watching that Maye shot.
“I got up, jumping up and down,” Trimble remembers. “That was before I had to stop being a Carolina fan because I couldn’t be biased in my recruitment.”
His only shot that came close was in his junior season in high school, when he hit a buzzer-beater to advance his team to the final eight of the Wisconsin state tournament.
“That shot was made by the perfect person at the right time,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “He’s deserving of being remembered forever.”
It was the result of a play UNC practices frequently: the ball screen, the roll, the pop, the weak-side pinch, and the skip.
As the horn sounded and court‑stormers surged, paused, then surged again, Trimble floated somewhere between disbelief and gratitude. He knew what the moment meant in the rivalry’s long lineage, and what it meant to deliver it in his final UNC‑Duke game in the Smith Center.
“I’m gonna remember this for the rest of my life,” he said. “This university means so much to me. The biggest point was to represent the University of North Carolina today, and we didn’t really do that for 32 minutes of the game. But, those last eight minutes, those last four minutes, we did that.”
Trimble admitted that he still hasn’t processed what he and the Tar Heels just did.
“No, no, I will when I go to bed,” he admitted. “But I’ve got a night to enjoy with my team. We deserve this.”
A night defined in less than a half‑second. A half-second defined by certainty. And a certainty that will echo in the history of the Carolina-Duke rivalry.
Photo courtesy of UNC Athletics
tarheeltribune.com 