WINSTON-SALEM – General wisdom suggests the Tar Heels cut the cord to last season’s miracle run to the national title game sometime before Christmas. Perhaps during a win over Michigan in Charlotte.

There was something liberating about that final snippet, as the team could move on and so could the media.

Aix weeks later, however, it might behoove North Carolina’s players to try connecting to what fueled the fire leading to the late-season spurt that almost got the program its seventh NCAA title. As crazy as it may seem, the Heels can find inspiration in what they did a year ago because they need it.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and rekindling that flame just may be this team’s tickets to regaining its lost form.

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The thing is, looking back hoping, or even expecting, that spark to ignite can be perilous.

“It’s definitely dangerous to look back on that, but it’s also a blessing because this feeling isn’t foreign to us,” junior forward Puff Johnson said following a 92-85 loss to Wake Forest on Tuesday night at Joel Coliseum.

“We know how it feels to get out of this because we have done it before, so we can lean on that experience.”

This time a year ago, Carolina was 17-7 overall and 9-4 in the ACC. Riding a three-game losing streak, the Tar Heels are currently 15-9 and 7-6. They have struggled down the stretch of numerous close losses, and Tuesday finally got run out of the gym.

Blowout losses had escaped them this season, unlike a year ago when the Heels were clobbered many times. The loss to the Demon Deacons was by only seven points, but Wake led by 22 at halftime, 26 early in the second half, and by 24 with 14:43 remaining in the contest. It was a rout, and all of UNC’s warts were on display.

And afterward, an admittance from some Tar Heels and their coach revealed chemistry is off quite a bit.

“I feel like on both ends of the floor,” Caleb Love said about the overall on-court chemistry. “We aren’t talking on the defensive end. On the offensive end we aren’t running our stuff with pace. One-through-18, I feel like it's just not there. We definitely have to have a conversation because something has got to change.”

The team must connect for fuses of any kind to light, and with a return to the practice court Thursday, beginning with satisfying a mandate by team leader Armando Bacot to his teammates, paraphrased: Don’t show up if you’re not going to grind for the good of the team.

But perhaps the knowledge and desire to recap a lost feeling that was so prominent during that amazing run could enable the Heels to wade through the high weeds and locate that spark.

First things first: The Heels must be in the right frame of mind, or all quests will be fruitless.

“No one is going to feel sorry for us and we have to know that, and know that we are all we got in the locker room,” junior guard RJ Davis said. “We just have to move forward.”

Starting over, recalibrating, a 37-minute team meeting immediately following the loss Tuesday, players publicly acknowledging different issues, and the sobering reality they aren’t headed to the NCAA Tournament at the current rate, are all boxes on the motivational checklist.

And maybe if the Heels complete that task, reconnecting to last spring’s magic is possible.