For the new-look Tar Heels, a familiar kind of test — and a different kind of response
This was supposed to be a fresh start, a tumbler of basketball mouthwash to erase the sour taste of last season, eight months in the waiting.
North Carolina was back at the Smith Center in earnest for the first time since losing to Duke to close out the most recent regular season, a harbinger of bigger indignities to come, but that was all supposed to be forgotten in the promise and optimism of a new season.
New faces, new attitude, even a new fashion sense from Hubert Davis, abandoning athleisure for a plaid sportcoat straight out of the Roy Williams collection. (Roy was there, per his usual, and he pulled That Sweater off the shelf for the occasion.)
And yet it was hard to shake the sense for a good chunk of Monday night that the Tar Heels were still dragging their own history along behind them like an anchor every time they let a Radford player get an open look at the basket, every time they threw the ball away.
North Carolina pulled away at the end for an 86-70 win, but for a long time it was far from comfortable. Then again, overcoming the kind of issues that sank them a year ago is the kind of new story they hoped to write.
“I was very proud of the response of our guys, particularly in the second half defensively,” Hubert Davis said. “That’s a good sign of a team that can respond that way.”
But late in the first half, the Tar Heels found themselves looking up at Radford on the scoreboard and, however briefly, back in that same mirror whose reflection they so disliked a year ago.
Of course, not everyone was around to live through that. For the most part, the new faces delivered as it said on the package: Harrison Ingram versatile, Cormac Ryan energetic, Eliot Cadeau a talented freshman with everything that entails, for better and worse. They certainly added something. And they were needed.
If this group thought it would have to wait a while for a real chance to prove that things were different, that all the changes — the arrivals, the departures — would lead to a different outcome a year after the preseason No. 1 team stayed home in March, it didn’t end up taking until Tennessee or Florida State or Connecticut or Kentucky, a run that has the vibe of the last four games of the season, not the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.
No, that moment arrived Monday, 19 minutes into the season, trailing the team picked to finish second in the Big South, an 18-point underdog, with a minute to go in the first half. The Tar Heels had shot the ball well, but the lapses on defense were glaring, and the turnovers were piling up.
Over the final 54 seconds of the half, North Carolina’s new faces showed what they can bring to the table. Ryan, most recently of Notre Dame, followed two made free throws with a steal and fed Ingram, most recently of Stanford, for a fast-break bucket. And R.J. Davis, most recently of these precincts for a lot more than recently, finished the half with an isolation drive and finish.
In 132 seconds, North Carolina went from down three to up five to finish out the half. Certainly, that would launch the inevitable run to blow the game open? It did not. It took the Tar Heels another 12 minutes and change to put Radford away, Ryan and Ingram making the key plays again, and if the first half was ominous, the second was certainly wanting at times before the final relief.
It was just the first time the Tar Heels were asked to show they were made of something stronger, and it certainly won’t be the last. That testing four-game stretch isn’t that far off, and you can really make it five starting with Northern Iowa on Nov. 22, because the Panthers are no pushover, either.
But this opener wasn’t some glorified exhibition, a romp to kick things off. Radford was game. Hubert Davis went 10 deep in the first half — unusual for him over the course of his head-coaching career — out of necessity. Armando Bacot had his 69th career double-double, and it was almost lost in the shuffle.
“You can’t get these games back,” Ryan said. “These games matter a ton, set the tone for the year. We’re continuing to grow and grow through winning. Everybody likes to say you can learn through losing, but I’d rather learn through winning. We’ve got room to grow which is always a good thing. I think the ceiling is really high for this team.”
The Highlanders put the question to the Tar Heels from the start, and they had to dig for an answer. Eventually, they found one, which is the part that matters.
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This story was originally published November 6, 2023 at 10:00 PM with the headline "For the new-look Tar Heels, a familiar kind of test — and a different kind of response."
