UNC basketball left wanting after Sweet 16 exit, but it was a season of reestablishment

The finality was only starting to set in inside the North Carolina locker room late last Thursday night, after the Tar Heels’ season-ending 89-87 defeat against Alabama in an NCAA Tournament West Regional semifinal. Some players covered their heads with a towel. Cormac Ryan soaked his feet in a small tub of ice. Nobody spoke much, or looked up.

A place of so much joy and hope, the day before, had turned somber. Such is the cruelty of March.

A year earlier there’d been a similar kind of pain for those Tar Heels who’d been around to experience it, but also a readiness for a long season to be over. This was the opposite feeling on Thursday night: a roomful of teammates — some of whom had been together for years; others for only less than a year — who never expected or wanted this to end so quickly.

“Nobody wanted this year to end,” Seth Trimble, the sophomore guard, said while he fought back tears. “So that says a lot.”

It said a lot because of what Trimble and some of his teammates endured the year before. And fair or not, so much of the past five months for the Tar Heels was really about recovering from all that happened the previous season, when UNC missed the NCAA Tournament after their improbable yet enthralling run to the 2022 national championship game.

The dysfunction of the 2022-23 season created a lot of questions, and pressure. There was the mass exodus of transfers out of the program. The influx of new arrivals. The return of Armando Bacot and RJ Davis. The reclassification of Elliot Cadeau, the freshman point guard. Amid all the roster movement, there was all the noise that Hubert Davis always tries to block out.

A lot of it, after last season, focused on him. There was the overriding question facing him and his program, entering this past season: Could UNC reestablish itself? Would the Tar Heels, for so long among college basketball’s standard-setters, prove the disappointment of 2023 to be a one-off? Or would the concerns and questions only grow?

Photos: North Carolina basketball falls to Alabama in the NCAA Sweet 16

Tar Heels speak of ‘fun’ season, despite ending

Davis and his players were left wanting after the Sweet 16 defeat against Alabama. And, undoubtedly, elements of that loss — from RJ Davis’ rare and costly off night to the inability in the final minutes to stop the Crimson Tide’s Grant Nelson to any number of little things (Armando Bacot’s missed dunk, for one) — will likely linger in the consciousness of these Tar Heels.

The larger questions surrounding UNC, though, are a lot fewer now than they were a year ago. The noise has quieted. It was a disappointing finish to a promising season, yes, but it was also a season in which the Tar Heels reestablished a foundation and culture that appeared shaky after Hubert Davis’ second season as head coach. After his third, things appear much more settled.

“I think this year for me was the funnest year of basketball I’ve had in my life,” Bacot said Thursday. “Even though we didn’t win a national championship, and that was a big goal for us — and we were definitely good enough and talented enough — the amount of fun we had this year and the refreshment we had for basketball ... it was just the best experience.”

The highs, for Bacot and his teammates, were numerous. UNC spent most of the season ranked among the top 10. There was the regular season sweep of Duke (and N.C. State) and the regular season ACC championship, which the Tar Heels secured with an emotional victory at Duke at the end of the regular season. UNC earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.

Individually, RJ Davis emerged to become the ACC Player of the Year and earned consensus All-American honors. He’ll have his jersey honored in the Smith Center rafters. Bacot, in his fifth and final college season, only added onto his legacy as one of the most beloved fan favorites in school history. He set the ACC record for games played, as well as the school record for rebounds, and leaves school as UNC’s second-leading all-time scorer.

Cadeau, in his first college season, often proved why he was such a heralded high school prospect. And, overall, UNC successfully incorporated five transfers into a variety of roles — the most notable of which belonged to Harrison Ingram, the junior forward from Stanford who arguably became the Tar Heels’ most important player, given his versatility and energy. Like Brady Manek before him, in 2022, Ingram became a fan favorite; a newcomer who felt like he’d been at UNC for much longer.

UNC supporters felt that way. So did Ingram, who spoke of the “hurt” on Thursday night after the defeat against Alabama.

“Just thinking about nine months that we were working,” he said. “Nine months that we were together, and I enjoyed every second of it, every day — even the days where we didn’t get along, I enjoyed every second second of it.

“It just hurts to know that we had aspirations of going to the Final Four, of winning the national championship; we were a one seed — we earned that. And now we’re done. We’re done.”

The processing of the finality had only just begun.

UNC’s offseason questions

Now Ingram represents one of the Tar Heels’ critical off-season questions. He could return for another year, a decision that would not be surprising given how often he raved about his experience in Chapel Hill. Yet he has also made clear his larger aspiration of playing in the NBA. The feedback he receives from NBA personnel in the coming weeks will likely shape his decision.

The same is true for RJ Davis, who has one more season of college eligibility remaining, if he chooses to use it. Davis did not provide much of an indication in recent weeks as to which way he might be leaning. Like Bacot, he might find it especially lucrative — due to name, image and likeness (NIL) deals — to remain in school, as opposed to pursuing a less certain professional career.

The decisions of Davis and Ingram will have clear ripples, and determine to what degree UNC needs to rely on additions from the transfer portal. Then there is the matter of hanging onto players who might be enticed by more lucrative opportunities — whether in money or playing time — elsewhere. Such is the cycle of college basketball’s off-season these days.

Regardless of Davis and Ingram’s decision, and the unknowns surrounding potential transfers, in or out, this was a season in which Hubert Davis answered questions and further solidified himself in his position. It was not necessarily given that it would happen. There were a lot of new pieces. There was the letdown of the year before, and the potential of a psychological hangover. There was all that noise.

It’s quieter now, even after an earlier-than-anticipated NCAA Tournament exit, and a season-ending defeat filled with two of the most dreaded words in sports and in life: “What if?” What if RJ Davis hadn’t missed all nine of his 3-point attempts? What if Bacot makes that dunk with about six minutes remaining?

The Tar Heels can at least take solace in some certainties: that Hubert Davis successfully managed the transfer portal, for one. That he put some distance between his program and the turmoil of 2023. That he reestablished a foundation and a culture that’d shown signs of slippage. That, for the majority of the season, UNC looked like UNC again.