LOS ANGELES – With so many wonderful aspects of playing basketball at North Carolina, among the few drawbacks is the pressure of satisfying a voracious appetite for success and the spot-light scrutiny it draws.
It speaks directly to a standard established more than a half-century ago, and it is ultimately how each addition of UNC Basketball is judged. With that comes much criticism when things don't go according to expected script.
No Tar Heels goes unscathed. None.
Not even the program’s all-time leading rebounder and second all-time scorer whose mark on Carolina basketball will last forever. Armando Bacot achieved so much in his five seasons at UNC, but he didn’t win a national title. And as unfair as it is, many people will begin their description of the 6-foot-11forward with that footnote.
Of course, many Heels haven’t won a natty, including such greats Phil Ford, Charlie Scott, and Antawn Jamison, to name a few. Yet, each played huge roles in enhancing UNC’s brand or maintaining it at exceptionally high levels, and perhaps that’s where Bacot fits in historically, along with the other members of the 2023-24 Tar Heels. One might say this club helped Carolina be Carolina again.
“We brought back that Carolina feeling with just the fans and everything with our success during the season, even the postseason getting to the Sweet 16,” Bacot said after a season-ending loss to Alabama at Crypto.com Arena, “Things we’ve done (are) something we haven’t done since I’ve been here. And I think that’s what (UNC) Coach (Hubert) Davis and all the coaches got going on is bringing that old feeling back.”
Consider in the previous four seasons, UNC went 14-19, 19-11 in Roy Williams’ last season, which included his first-ever first-round NCAA Tournament loss. The 2021-22 Tar Heels (29-10), the first under the direction of Hubert Davis, caromed around like a pinball until catching fire, blazing through the last month on a very different level than the first four, ending up losing in the national championship game.
Then last season’s team started out No. 1 and didn’t make the NCAAs, finishing with a 20-13 mark.
This year: 29-8 over; ACC regular season champions; No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament; a first-team All-America who also won conference player of the year; and a spot in the Sweet 16.
First ACC regular season title since 2019, one win away from first 30-win season since 2017, first one seed in the NCAA Tournament since 2019, and the first ACC Player of the Year since 2017.
‘"This team has brought back everybody’s faith, as a whole, brought back the Carolina standard,’” sophomore guard Seth Trimble said head coach Hubert Davis told them after Thursday's loss. “That’s the biggest thing.”
UNC did this in a most unconventional time for college athletics.
Piecing together a team through the transfer portal today is far more impactful on the following season than general high school recruiting. For the Heels to regain their old way, the program dipped into the portal landing four key players, three of whom had actually faced UNC while at other schools. Two were in the ACC.
Paxson Wojcik, who came over from Brown, expressed pride sitting in the locker room after the loss to Alabama. Cormac Ryan, who came over from Notre Dame, defended RJ Davis on the dais during the postgame press conference in a manner as if they’d been teammates and program brothers the last four seasons.
Stanford transfer Harrison Ingram often spoke about Carolina needing to be Carolina, and this team was pushing the program in that direction. And Jae’Lyn Withers, a Charlotte native who played three seasons at Louisville before moving to Chapel Hill, doesn’t need a course on what UNC was all about before this recent dip. He knows.
“It was great to be a part of a team that could be considered as one of the teams that accomplished that,” he said Thursday night.
That explains flowing tears throughout UNC’s locker room that night. The care and pride factors were the foundation of that emotion. One, they won’t get to play together as a team anymore, and the other, this team knows what it achieved, and that part of it re-setting the standard is they could and “should” have done more.
Playing on a Carolina team that neatly fits into the same sphere as so, so many before them is what North Carolina basketball is all about.
“It means everything. It means everything,” a red-eyed Trimble said. “We’ve seen the standard over the years. We’ve seen legends come through; guys on the staff like Coach Davis, Coach (Marcus) Paige, Coach (Jeff) Lebo, Big (Sean) May. Just to see the success they had, to get back to that level.
“We didn’t win the ACC Tournament, just lost (in the NCAAs), but so much was accomplished this year. We definitely set that standard again.”
The critics were out in full force with UNC’s final loss, and a few will maintain such a disposition. But the truth is, even in falling short of goals set by outsiders after the Heels established themselves as a top-shelf club, Carolina Basketball was back this season.
And the players know it.
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