CHAPEL HILL – Get used to it, the narrative around the North Carolina basketball team this season will emanate straight from the Tar Heels’ very mouths.
Championship or bust. That’s it.
That is how the Heels see the 2022-23 season that commences in a little more than three months.
“Yeah, yeah. For sure,” junior guard Caleb Love said about the moniker, one he thoroughly embraces.
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UNC went 29-10 last season, often ricocheting off the walls of a season that lacked definition until a scaled-down version of the team gained steam and roared to the national championship game, when it lost to Kansas by three points. Four starters return, and the Heels added All-Big Ten honorable mention forward Pete Nance from Northwestern, plus have back some talented guys that could give Carolina one of the better benches in the nation, too.
The Tar Heels are loaded some pundits are saying, and will be the runaway preseason number one team in most polls. They know it, are fine with it, and are intent on following through with those projections.
“We’re really dialed into what to expect this year and what we want, and that’s to win the national championship,” junior point guard RJ Davis said recently at the Smith Center. “We’ve been working hard non-stop every day this summer, whether it’s individually or as a team.
“We’re close as a team so far, so it’s been great. The chemistry’s there, so we’re only going to move forward as well.”
The narrative around the team is quite different from what they read and heard for most of last season. That is if the players bothered checking out media reports and fans’ reactions to their inconsistencies.
Hubert Davis spent much of his first season at the helm requesting his team avoid what others were saying. He wanted them to “block out the noise,” almost all of which was critical or laced with concerns, especially when the Heels found themselves at 12-6 overall and 4-3 in the ACC following consecutive losses in January at Miami and Wake Forest by a combined 50 points.
Now, however, the message is the same, with a twist.
“When they came back to campus, we had a meeting, and I just wanted to set the tone and let them know where I’m coming from," Carolina’s coach said in June. “And I told them this year, a huge determining factor is the key for us is now, both is noise, but now it’s the positive noise. ‘You guys are great. You guys are in this way-too-early top 25 ranked number one.’
“It absolutely means nothing. ‘You guys going back to the Final Four. You’ve got four starters coming back.’ That’s noise. And for us to focus on what is real and that’s our preparation, our practice, and how we can get better this summer to possibly put us in a position where we were last year and see what happens.”
The thing is, the players admit they knew what was being said about them last winter and it didn’t affect them. They know what is being said and written now as well, and are intent on it not affecting them. That is the core of what Davis is trying to instill within them.
They aren’t going to ignore the noise, but they don’t have to take it seriously. The Heels know who and what they are. They have a clear stated mission of cutting down the nets next April in Houston, site of the 2023 Final Four. Doing so is a topic they are quite comfortable discussing.
“We’re definitely motivated to the point where we know we can do it, it’s (about) how much you want to give up and how much you need to dial in,” RJ Davis said. “I think right now our focus level is off the charts right now.”
And it must remain that way for another eight-plus months.
