North Carolina Intra-squad Scrimmage Results

When his team needed a basket with 5.3 seconds remaining, sophomore point guard Marcus Paige called his own number. Paige’s floater swished through the net as time expired to cap a furious comeback and end Friday’s Blue-White Game tied at 50 points after 20 minutes of play.

The scrimmage - a more competitive Late Night with Roy finale than in previous years given the team has been practicing for three weeks - gave Carolina fans their first glimpse at the 2013-14 Tar Heels. Paige’s shot provided a thrill at the buzzer, but his White team teammate Kennedy Meeks stole the show. The freshman big man had 16 points (unofficially) and established himself down low. Meeks, who at 6’9 and 284 pounds gives the Tar Heels a physical presence in the post, was furious on the glass as well. Roy Williams said Meeks came to Chapel Hill in July at 317 pounds and had already lost more than 30 pounds. “He’s got great hands and touch around that basket, and he keeps getting his hands,” the coach said. “I told Joel (James) to try to boxing him out; that may help us.”

Sophomore forward Joel James matched up with Meeks for much of the evening, and the two are competing for playing time at the ‘5’ position. James said Meeks despite his size is able to find his way through the smallest crack to secure a rebound. “He’s such a big body, and he has a great nose for the ball,” James said. “I feel like he’s going to cause a lot of problems for other players trying to box him out.”James, who is relatively new to the game (he didn’t play organized basketball until his sophomore year of high school), continues to improve and understand how Williams wants it to be played. “Coach Williams has a saying: ‘perfect practice makes perfect,’ so everything I do on the basketball court, I try to do it [perfectly] and sometimes it’s my downfall, because I tend to think about the wrong things I did too often. I get caught up in mistakes, but I try to be a perfectionist in everything I do and try to carry it over into a game.” James scored 10 points for the Blue team, who were led by the hot shooting of sophomore P.J. Hairston. Hairston finished the night with 20 points and looked as comfortable as ever beyond the three-point line. J.P. Tokoto had 10 points while freshman Isaiah Hicks added 8 off the bench. For the White team, senior guard Leslie McDonald scored 12 points, including six from beyond the arc, and sophomore forward Brice Johnson chipped in 10.