Was UNC basketball too nice last year? How new additions bring sandpaper Tar Heels lacked

Everybody knows something was missing from North Carolina a year ago, as the preseason No. 1 went from the national title game to out of the NCAA tournament entirely. It doesn’t take a latter-day John Wooden to figure that out.

Putting a finger on what exactly was missing might be a little harder, even if fans seemed eager to pin the blame on the now-departed Caleb Love. Looking at what UNC added in the transfer portal might offer a clue, though. Three of them have history with the Tar Heels, and not the good kind.

There’s Jae’Lyn Withers, who famously, uh, toppled Armando Bacot in Louisville two years ago. There’s Paxson Wojcik, a UNC legacy who fired up the Smith Center while playing for Brown in the fall of 2021. And there’s Cormac Ryan, most recently of Notre Dame, who got tossed from his final visit to Chapel Hill as a visitor last spring for a hard foul on Puff Johnson.

There’s a common thread there.

“I didn’t like Cormac, really,” said Bacot, North Carolina’s elder statesman. “He was a little a**hole. But it’s good having him, though. That’s the type of guy you want on your team and don’t want to play against.

“You can look back at last year, when him and Puff got into it. That’s just how he is. We love it now that he’s on our team. We needed somebody like him that’s not afraid to get in there and be dirty a little bit and make people mad.”

So the problem is, you guys were too … nice?

“Exactly,” Bacot said.

Which may be why Ryan feels so embraced by his former opponents. Like a hockey enforcer getting traded to a rival, the bad blood drains quickly once he’s wearing the same uniform.

“It probably took a couple days but it didn’t take long,” Ryan said. “I felt right at home. That’s a credit to our staff and all our players. I was welcomed with open arms, and I’m really excited about it.”

North Carolina coach Hubert Davis scoffed at the idea that the Tar Heels sought out players in the transfer portal they didn’t enjoy playing against on the basketball court, but there’s also no question the group fits the description. But what about affable Stanford transfer Harrison Ingram, who comes off less like a hockey enforcer and more like a court jester?

Even he found a way to get under Bacot’s skin.

“I got a history with all these guys, even Harrison when he visited here,” Bacot said. “He was just a fool.”

Ingram, in his own defense: “Oh, no, no, no. I keep it serious whenever I need to. Like on the court when coach Davis is talking, or we’re in the locker room — when it comes to basketball I keep it serious. But off the court, I’m a pretty goofy dude.”

It’s fair to ask whether the Tar Heels needed to add a little levity as much as they needed to add a lot of sandpaper this season. They looked and played uptight, never comfortable with the expectations they willingly embraced, never able to recapture the Love/Brady Manek-fueled magic that launched their Final Four run two years ago.

This group needed three things: A fresh start, which it has this fall; a pass-first point guard to allow R.J. Davis to be a shooter, a role freshman Eliot Cadeau should fill; and a personality transplant, which the new arrivals can potentially provide.

Whatever the word you want to use — Nice? Complacent? The dreaded “soft?” — the Tar Heels can’t argue the point after the way last season went and the way last season ended. And even if the new faces weren’t deliberately chosen because the Tar Heels would rather play with them than against them, there’s no question that’s the case.

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