UNC basketball running out of time to turn it on again as another opportunity slips away
There sure were a lot of people who decided they’d rather beat the Smith Center traffic than see if North Carolina could close a seven-point deficit in 90 seconds. That’s not to shame them, because who’s to blame them at this point?
This UNC season has been an endless series of false dawns, blind alleys and dashed hopes. Monday was another. The Tar Heels cut the Miami lead to four, with 36 seconds to go, but no closer in an 80-72 loss, North Carolina’s 10th of the season already and a fourth straight with double digits in that category.
For so long, the Tar Heels looked like an NBA contender having a hard time getting excited about playing Sacramento on a Tuesday night. But all the turning points have turned out to be cul de sacs — Saturday against Clemson is the latest — and the time to turn it on long ago passed. North Carolina not only still can’t find its way back to where it was a year ago, it may already be too late.
The one-year anniversary of that baffling loss to Pittsburgh is still a few days away, but the Tar Heels started to become the team they became in late January of last year, going 11-2 to close out the regular season.
And, after that, you know.
From roughly the same juncture of this season, the Tar Heels bounced back from the loss at Virginia with four straight wins, including the thumping of N.C. State. Since then, UNC has lost four of five games in 11 days. The win over Clemson in the middle, 48 hours earlier — when UNC went 15-for-33 from long distance — was just another mirage. Nothing really changed. There was no oasis in the desert, only a 5-for-31 night against Miami.
The Tar Heels made up for that by getting to the rim in the first half, but when the Hurricanes adjusted in the second and Armando Bacot picked up four fouls in five minutes, they were reduced to a perimeter, jump-shooting team. Which, for this group, hasn’t exactly been a recipe for success.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to have to make shots. It is what it is,” North Carolina coach Hubert Davis said, then noting the Tar Heels are the worst 3-point shooting team in the ACC: “That’s never a good thing.”
This was a golden opportunity to pick up one of the Quadrant 1 wins that weigh heavy on the tournament balance sheet — Miami may not qualify at the moment, but has a great chance to get there by Selection Sunday — and there aren’t many left: At N.C. State, against Virginia, maybe the final game against Duke.
The Tar Heels’ resume is thin enough as it is, and while this loss to Miami won’t necessarily hurt them as much as it might have helped them, they have no margin for error, and could find themselves entirely at the mercy of the whims of the committee and whatever its Wheel of Deciding Factors lands on this March. Which is not how UNC expected this to go.
“Oh, I’m stressed the hell out,” Bacot said. “I want to get back to the NCAA Tournament. That’s all our goal. I mean, this would have never even crossed my mind. But yeah, on a level of worried I’m 100 percent worried.”
That, in itself, is certainly not an uncommon fate. That happens to a lot of teams, but not typically to the preseason No. 1. And while everybody has been making eyes at UNC, nobody’s won more games in the ACC the past two years than Miami.
They added two impact transfers and returned three key players, including the criminally underrated Jordan Miller, who beat the Tar Heels with the same reverse move underneath at least five times — so many times Miller said he lost count.
“I love the pump fake. I do. I really do,” Miller said. “It was falling for me tonight. It was a good road win, a good statement win.”
The Hurricanes are arguably the best team in the ACC, but either way they have a bunch of good wins and only one bad loss, and any number of ways to beat you. Miami is, in short, the team North Carolina was supposed to be, and may have run out of time to become.
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This story was originally published February 13, 2023 at 10:13 PM with the headline "UNC basketball running out of time to turn it on again as another opportunity slips away."
