Luke Maye on UNC, playing in Italy and the shot that changed his life forever
Four years ago, Luke Maye hit one of the most famous shots in UNC basketball history.
In 2017, Maye edged Kentucky in the final second with an 18-foot jumper. The shot clinched a 75-73 win in a March Madness instant classic and launched a million Tar Heel fans skyward. In many ways, it was similar to Michael Jordan’s shot to win a national championship for UNC in 1982.
“That shot feels like it wasn’t that long ago,” Maye said by phone from Italy. “But time rolls on.”
Yes it does. When I caught up with Maye this week, the 24-year-old from Huntersville was playing his first season in “Serie A” — the highest-level pro basketball league in Italy.
Maye is doing his best overseas, but it’s not an ideal situation. He would rather have made an NBA roster after his college career ended in 2019. The “European vacation” aspect of spending the past seven months in Italy has been drastically altered by the worldwide pandemic. And the Italian team he’s playing for has been mediocre.
Still, as Maye pointed out: “I’m playing basketball for a living and playing pretty well. So that’s what it comes down to, I guess.”
Maye and I spoke via FaceTime recently about Italy, UNC, his family and “The Shot.” Questions and answers have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Scott Fowler: Since “The Shot” against Kentucky, you’re a guy who is always going to be associated with the NCAA tournament and March Madness. Was that shot the greatest single moment of your UNC career?
Luke Maye: No, although that Sunday game in Memphis against Kentucky was something that changed my life forever. And it will be something that I will always be linked to and it will be pretty special to kind of have that bond.
But I tell everybody, without question or hesitation, the greatest memory was the night we won the national championship (over Gonzaga, eight days later).
Everybody says: ‘Why not your shot?’
It’s because if we lose in the Final Four, or lose in the championship game, my shot is just another game. But because we won it all, that makes my shot a lot more important. Winning a championship at the highest level of college basketball? That’s what is priceless.
SF: What’s it like playing basketball in Italy in the middle of COVID-19?
LM: It’s kind of a crazy time for everybody, especially just being over here by myself. But I’ve found a little routine and I just roll with my routine.
We’re in a red zone, which means all restaurants are closed for inside dining, and you can’t travel outside your region unless for work. So I haven’t been able to explore Italy.
We do go other places, too, because we play European competitions. So I’ve been to Greece, Russia, France and Spain.
But when I go to those places, it’s just hotels and gyms. So it’s not as good of a European experience … Maybe if I come back for another year, it will be easier to see everything.
SF: Where exactly are you located right now?
LM: I’m in Trento, up in the northern part of Italy, not that far from Germany. We’re two hours east of Milan and two hours west of Venice, so it’s close to two big Italian cities. But it’s just been hard to travel anywhere.
SF: Have you played in front of fans at any point this season?
LM: No. All the gyms have been empty due to COVID-19.
SF: When did you get to Italy and how much longer are you staying?
LM: I got here in early August, and the season didn’t start until the middle of September. Our team has been struggling a little bit lately (Trento is 8-13 in Italian games; it also had some mild success in the Euro Cup basketball tournament).
We have seven regular-season games left, and we’ve got to win about five of the last seven (to make the postseason), which is doable but kind of tough. So, if we don’t win five out of seven, we will be done May 3rd.
But if we do, then we could go all the way until the middle of June. (Maye is averaging 13.6 points per game and 6.1 rebounds per game for Trento in Italy’s Series A).
SF: What’s the vaccination situation like where you are?
LM: People are getting vaccinated, but it’s going a lot slower in Italy than in the U.S. The cases have been spiking, which has not been good. That’s why we’re in a red zone. Masks are mandatory everywhere.
We get tested for COVID every three days. We’ve had two positive cases on our team and I have fortunately not gotten COVID yet, so hopefully I’ll stay away from it.
SF: Were you able to watch UNC’s first-round NCAA tournament loss to Wisconsin live?
LM: I was. That was a rough way to go out. I guess everyone is trying to figure out what this offseason holds for Carolina basketball.
I get ESPN here, and ESPN Plus, and I was able to watch all the UNC regular-season games. It’s a 5-hour time difference now and usually we’re six hours ahead (a 9 p.m. UNC game was on at 3 a.m. in Italy), but Daylight Savings doesn’t happen in Italy until two weeks after the United States. The time difference was a challenge.
SF: You’re the oldest of four Maye brothers, and now your littlest brother is in Chapel Hill, too, where he is an early enrollee on a football scholarship and plans to play quarterback like your father did. How’s that going?
LM: Yes, Drake (who skipped his senior season at Myers Park to enroll early) got there in January. So my parents (Mark and Aimee Maye) have been empty-nesters now for about 2 ½ months. It’s actually my Mom’s birthday today so they went up to Chapel Hill to see Beau (the third-oldest Maye brother, a student at Chapel Hill) and Drake.
SF: You got injured at some point this season. Are you healthy now?
LM: Yes, I feel good. I’ve had two different injuries. I had a little injury to my big toe right when I got here at the end of August, so I missed our first couple of games of the season. And then I hurt my knee a little bit and missed another month in December. But now I feel completely healthy and have played better lately.
Our team has had some good games and bad games; we’re about .500 on the season. It’s been a little bit frustrating. This is kind of new to me, just being over here by myself and being hurt some, because I was never really hurt in college. But we’re getting back in the swing of it and trying to finish the season strong, which is all you can do.
SF: How many American vs. Italian players do you have?
LM: In Italy — and in France and maybe even Germany, Spain and Russia — you can have six foreign players and six national players. So if you’re playing in Italy, it’s six from Italy and six from any other country — Spain, France, wherever.
Luckily we have six guys from America and they all speak English, counting me. I didn’t know any of them coming in, so having some new guys to play with has been cool. But like I said, we haven’t been really able to go out and eat much, so it’s just been kind of a weird year.
SF: You were part of one of the golden eras of UNC basketball. What are your main memories of those times from 2015-19 when you were playing for the Tar Heels?
LM: I talk with Kenny Williams and Justin Jackson all the time — they are two of my closest friends. We were so lucky and very successful.
Me and Kenny walked onto a national championship-caliber team (in 2015, when UNC lost the title game to Villanova) with two class players in Brice Johnson and Marcus Paige and an unbelievable leader in Joel James.
Obviously, we didn’t play very much my freshman year. But then in our sophomore year, Kenny started the first 20 games before getting hurt and I finished the season really well (that was the year Maye made the shot against Kentucky and UNC won the national championship).
In four years there, we were a No. 1 seed three times. We won 120-something games (UNC went 121-32 in Maye’s four years).
We had some incredible teams. Just thinking back on that and the bonds we will have for life because we did win it all. We got to the pinnacle of college basketball.
You only have one team every year standing on the last Monday night, that’s always what Coach Williams told us, and once we were that team. I hate that we didn’t do better in my junior and senior years (2017-18 and 2018-19, when Maye averaged a double-double in both years) because I thought we had good enough teams to do it.
But like you’re seeing again this year in college basketball, March is crazy. We had an incredible ride.
