UNC’s Armando Bacot became a face of modern college basketball — and a beloved throwback

The curtain call for Armando Bacot came with three minutes, seven seconds remaining in North Carolina’s 84-51 victory Tuesday night against Notre Dame, in what was his final college home game. It came after all the points (2,230 and counting) and rebounds (1,639, a school record), and it came 1,582 days after his first college game, played on this same Smith Center court.

The moment came after more than four years and almost five full seasons. It came after 162 games, an ACC record. It came after Bacot had played for two head coaches and alongside more than 40 teammates; after the delirious rush of the 2022 postseason and the despair of 2023; after a journey unlike any in college basketball history.

Consider what Bacot, the fifth-year senior forward, had experienced during his college years:

▪ The onset of a global pandemic and cancellation of the season in March 2020, the day after he was part of the final game of the ACC tournament that year.

▪ The surreal playing, during the 2020-21 season, of games in mostly empty arenas, or in front of cardboard cutouts that served as stand-ins for spectators.

▪ The retirement of Roy Williams, in April 2021, and the hiring of Hubert Davis as UNC’s head coach.

▪ The reluctant allowance, by the NCAA, of college athletes to be able to monetize their name, image or likeness, which led to unprecedented commercial opportunity — and led to Bacot to becoming a nationwide face of a movement.

▪ The equally reluctant allowance of freedom movement, and the advent of the transfer portal, which, along with NIL rights, led to a form of unregulated free agency in college athletics.

It was for all those reasons and more why Bacot received a long, loud ovation upon his exit Tuesday night with a little more than three minutes remaining in a victory long decided. For a brief moment he walked alone on the court, toward the sideline. He held his arms high. He met Davis in front of the UNC bench and the two embraced, Davis wrapping Bacot in a bear hug.

Bacot a constant during a time of change

There was a catharsis for all the aforementioned reasons and numbers — for everything Bacot had endured here and all he’d given. But also because players like him have become rare in a time of rapid transience throughout college athletics. In a time of unprecedented movement, when it can be difficult to follow which player is on what roster, Bacot stayed.

In a time of upheaval so dramatic that not even a school’s conference affiliation can be counted upon in the long term anymore, he stayed. And, yes, he made a lot of money, too — an untold amount through various NIL deals that made Bacot one of the most successful commercial pitchmen of this new college sports era.

If anything, though, his business success reaffirmed that college athletes should’ve had NIL rights all along; that in some cases, and perhaps most, their commercial value is never going to be higher than it is during their college years. Bacot understood that and leaned into it. He signed deals that were undoubtedly lucrative, and also took on smaller gigs on Cameo for $100 a pop.

His page there is filled with five-star reviews for messages he recorded for birthdays or Mother’s Days or, in at least one case, a well-wishing for the start of a distant state high school basketball tournament, when Bacot looked into his phone camera and said:

“What’s good Jack, it’s Armando here, and I just want to give you the best of luck for your upcoming North Dakota high school basketball tournament Class A tournament — I know you’re going to kill it and I just want you to do your thing.”

Imagine being teenaged Jack in North Dakota, and opening a video message from perhaps your favorite UNC player saying your team needs your 3-pointers (as Bacot said later in the message). No player in UNC’s storied basketball history has connected with fans the way Bacot has. Part of that is a reflection of the times, and the ease of communication. But part of it, too, is that Bacot provided connection in a moment of disconnection throughout college athletics. He seemed to love playing at UNC as much or more than UNC fans love cheering for the Tar Heels.

‘Commitment’

A couple of weeks ago, during a regular press conference before his team’s game at Virginia, Davis, in his third season as UNC’s coach, considered a question about how he wanted Bacot to be remembered. It was the kind of bigger-picture inquiry that Davis sometimes has a propensity for dodging; one he could’ve dismissed with a “the-season-isn’t-over” kind of response.

But he thought about it for a few seconds and paused and began to become emotional. And finally the word came to him, the one he’d been searching for to describe Bacot.

“The word that comes to my mind is commitment,” he said. “In a time where there’s been a lot of change in college basketball, here’s a guy that’s been here for five years. And not only been here for five years but has been successful. And (has shown) that you can be really, really successful at the highest level and you can also still be committed to being and staying at one institution.”

Bacot, himself, became emotional Tuesday night in a way he did not anticipate. It did not happen so much on the court, where he managed to keep it together, but afterward, when he took his usual seat in a lounge UNC uses for its postgame media interviews with players. Bacot always sits in the same place, in a chair just to the left when he walks out, and inevitably, on this night, the questions came about his Senior Night, asking him to contextualize his time here.

He started to answer one of those questions and stopped.

“I mean ...”

He bowed his head and wiped his eyes.

“I didn’t know I was going to start crying.”

He said he would miss even these postgame media sessions, which, for players, can quickly grow monotonous and tiresome. There are often several waves of media members and so the questions often repeat. And yet Bacot never seems in a rush, and he often provides thoughtful, introspective gems. The setting makes it easier to understand how much of a natural he is as an endorser, or how he has become a favorite among his coaches and teachers. One of them, Jim Kitchen, a UNC business school professor, has said Bacot is among the best students he’s ever taught.

And now here Bacot was Tuesday night, after he’d collected himself a bit, sharing a thought that went viral when it made its way online: “I may not have been the best player that ever played here,” he said slowly, as if to make sure he said it the way he wanted to say it.

“I may not have scored the most points. I did grab the most rebounds. I may not have blocked the most shots. But I think, in terms of players, nobody has loved this school more than I have.

“And that’s something I can be proud of.”

On Roy Williams, and 3-pointers

Bacot’s final home game came with the kind of charming hijinks that have endeared him to fans over the past several years. He somehow missed a point blank dunk, for the second consecutive game, but then made the fourth and fifth 3-pointers of his college career. After both of them, the Smith Center crowd released a roar that was part appreciation and part shock, at the sight of Bacot, who has done most of his work in the post, taking and making two long shots from the perimeter.

“It was no way I was leaving this game without hitting a 3-pointer,” Bacot said.

The second one he made, seven seconds before he left his home court for the final time, turned out to be his final shot in the Smith Center. The moment it went in, an ESPN camera caught Roy Williams smiling and shaking his head and holding up his hands as if to say, “Well played, ‘Mondo. Well played.” It was Williams who recruited Bacot to UNC, and who coached him during his first two seasons; it was Williams who once sat Bacot down, after his first season, for a hard talk.

“Telling me I needed to get better,” Bacot said.

At the time, UNC had a couple of heralded freshmen big men coming in, with the impending arrival of Walker Kessler and Day’ron Sharpe, and Williams made it clear to Bacot that playing time was no guarantee.

“I feel like a lot of kids in my situation would have transferred or quit,” Bacot said, needing a moment to gather himself, pausing. “But ... it just pushed me to go harder.”

Now here Bacot was Tuesday night, walking off the court and stopping to share a moment with Williams, who was waiting for Bacot and RJ Davis and UNC’s other seniors near the home tunnel. Bacot gave his old coach a hug and leaned down to tell him something, and what came out was not anything sentimental but typical of Bacot’s dry humor.

“I told him he should’ve allowed me to shoot 3s early on,” he said.

“I don’t even want to tell y’all what he said to me.”

Bacot the ambassador

From there, Bacot made his final walk — at least after a game — through that tunnel and into the locker room. The finality of it all began to hit him, he said, during his regular session with reporters. He thought about how he was doing it for the last time after a Tar Heels home game; the last time in his usual chair, in his usual place. That’s why some of the tears came.

“Like on the low, ‘Mondo’s a big baby,” RJ Davis said across the room, laughing. “So that wasn’t surprising.”

When he arrived at UNC in 2019, Bacot was not sure how long he might remain in college. He was not sure of a lot of things. It was a time before NIL and before the phrase “transfer portal” entered into the lexicon of college athletics. He was the kind of player, in those early years, who might especially fluster Williams, who seemed to always take more pleasure in turning his big men into something more than they thought they could become.

What Bacot became is one of the most beloved players in school history. Only part of that is because of everything that happened on the court. He helped lead the Tar Heels to the 2022 Final Four, and nearly led them, on one leg, to the national championship. An indelible moment, for anyone who was there to see it, came when Bacot needed to be helped from a golf cart to the locker room after UNC’s loss to Kansas in the ‘22 championship game. He couldn’t walk.

It was a moment of perseverance in nearly five years full of it. Bacot stuck through the challenges of his freshman and sophomore years. He played through a pandemic and a coaching change. He became an ambassador of a sport and a school.

In a time of great change, Bacot proved to be a constant. He’s had arguably the most unique college basketball experience in recent memory. He became one of the faces of a movement of athlete empowerment throughout college sports and, at the same time, a beloved throwback.

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