AJ: Resolve Test Takes On Another Layer

The North Carolina coach was asked if he can put into perspective, or perhaps in a month from now when the Tar Heels’ season has settled from mercifully ending, that his team posted its ninth different starting lineup of the season in their 72-55 loss to Louisville.

Ol’ Roy let it rip.

“If I’m alive in a month or so I can guarantee I’m not going to think about this crap,” he said, causing a roar of laughter in the media room here at KFC Yum! Center. “I will be thinking about some way to figure it out so we’ll be better.”

He’s still trying to make things better for the remainder of this season, which includes four more ACC games and at least one in the conference tournament in Greensboro in a couple of weeks.

Crap, garbage, junk, whatever you want to call it, the season the Tar Heels are enduring can be decorated with plenty of words rarely used in sports writing. It also comes with some questions not often asked of teams, especially one with the fabled pedigree of North Carolina basketball.

But just as soon as the Heels started getting relatively healthy, which means for them having Brooks, Cole Anthony and Brandon Robinson on the floor together and not limping or grimacing in pain much, it wasn't. That hasn’t happened often, and it didn’t happen here today.

Brooks fell ill a few days ago and it got progressively worse. He went through some stuff at practice Friday but his sickness had worsened by the time he woke up Saturday morning, and he didn’t make the team’s shoot around and stayed back in the team hotel for the game.

In a season ravaged by injuries, Brooks was one of just a few noteworthy Heels who hadn’t missed a game, but now he has.

So, if you consider the meltdowns, the last-possession losses – six of them in the last six weeks – and the parade of injuries, how much more can this team take?

“It’s kind of like a here-we-go-again thing,” junior guard Andrew Platek said. “It’s like who’s gonna be next this week.”

That has prevented Carolina from generating any kind of cohesion on either end of the floor, which is too often rather apparent.

“It’s difficult because we just never get a rhythm and get a consistent lineup together and build that chemistry,” senior Brandon Robinson said. “Me being out, Cole (Anthony) being out – just guys being in and out of the lineup is difficult to play that way.”

Platek and some Heels said that after buzzer-beating losses to Virginia last weekend and at Notre Dame on Monday. They’ve said it after second-half meltdowns when they could sense seemingly comfortable leads were about to wash away in a flash.

The aggregate and certain cruelty of how the Tar Heels have experienced so many massive obstacles – some they admit have been self-made – must have a breaking point, right?

That old human nature deal says so. But it doesn’t factor in something these kids carry with them to the court each time. And at different times during the season, various Heels have mentioned it.

Christian Keeling after the puzzling loss at Wake Forest, Brooks after an early loss in January, Leaky Black a couple of times, Platek several times, and so on: But the words on the front of their chest matter to these kids.

This isn’t an attempt to cull some compassion for them or prop them up as sympathetic figures, though you don’t have a pulse if you don’t feel for these players and their coach. It’s just what on earth it is.

The Heels never quite navigated their way to whatever course this season could have had. Misfortune and too much poor basketball have made sure that would never happen.

They’re now 10-17 overall, 3-13 in the ACC, have lost seven consecutive games and 12 of their last 14. This is North Carolina and its coach is Roy Williams. Back in October, something like this would have been as unfathomable as a meteorite crashing into the Dean Dome, but it’s happened. It’s here and the results of this season aren’t going away.

So, what’s next for the Heels?

Five more games, at least, and then they get to move on from the “crap.”