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CHAPEL HILL – While the world of social media was ensconced in dissecting the personal lives of North Carolina’s starting guards, Caleb Love and RJ Davis were doing their best to ignore it.

But as the rumors about them soared even more after the Tar Heels’ worst performance of the season in a loss Tuesday night at Wake Forest, the juniors decided they had to do something. Say something, or in this age of social media, tweet something.

So, Caleb Love did: “laughing at the BS (laughing emoji) we locked in 4 @ariidavis_”

Love tagged RJ Davis, who soon retweeted with the following reply: “Nah fr tho saying anything (laughing emoji). We good over here (thumbs up emoji).”

The tweets obviously went viral, and the intent was mostly fulfilled.

“Rumors, I’m sure y’all have seen it, that’s just what it was, and none of that was true as far as the me and RJ situation,” Love said following UNC’s 91-71 victory over Clemson on Saturday at the Smith Center.

“I texted RJ and I asked him first, just to make sure he was good, to respect his privacy. That’s my brother. I love him, and we all got nothing going on. No beef, no none of that they’re trying to label onto us.”

The rumors started swirling quickly taking off last Saturday night when images of a sign held up by some Duke students and the Cameron Crazies’ cheat sheet was tweeted by some reporters. The inference was something that could test chemistry on a team, and certainly a friendship, and one of the reasons the Tar Heels had lost three in a row and were on the NCAA Tournament fence was because of what happened and the effect on Love and Davis.

“I feel like that people were just trying to put this narrative out there and try to stir things up because of the way we were playing,” Davis said. “Me and him felt that tweet just putting it out there, ‘We’re good.’”

Reaction to the tweet went in myriad directions. Many supported the players, and some didn’t. Some on Twitter were downright vulgar.

“It is what it is,” Love said about reaction to the tweet. “That’s what social media’s job is today to get however many retweets, likes, views or whatever. Y’all ate it up. Y’all believe whatever y’all see on social media. Like I said, there’s nothing going on between us. He’s my brother and I love him.”

Davis is glad they did it. Laughing at the noise is one thing, shutting it down some was another.

“It did accomplish things, just to clear up the air,” he said. “We could have gone about it and not said anything and just play basketball like we did today, but I think putting it out there cleared things up a bit.”

Of course, Davis also smiled when asked if they were winning would the narrative gotten so blown out of proportion.

“It’s crazy how this whole world is and what’s said and whatnot,” Davis said. “We’re a mentally tough team, and we know each other well enough to know not to not let that impact us and things stir up in the locker room because of what Tiktok says or what Twitter says.”