Armando Bacot has heartbreaking assessment of UNC’s letdown season
By Kristen Wong
Once the underdog darlings of last year’s March Madness, the Tar Heels have fallen back down to Earth. Here’s what Carolina star Armando Bacot had to say about this season’s disappointment.
Following their loss in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, the North Carolina Tar Heels can just about kiss their March Madness dreams goodbye.
On Thursday, the Tar Heels fell 68-59 to the Virginia Cavaliers, getting knocked out of the ACC Tournament in a nightmarish hangover of a season that just keeps getting worse.
The inherent beauty of March Madness lies in the madness itself, which usually comes from lower-seeded teams toppling blue-blooded kings and enjoying a historic Cinderella run. But the madness goes both ways.
For North Carolina, who likely won’t even make it to the Big Dance, their madness came in the form of stone-cold 3-point shooting and the ongoing lack of cohesion despite keeping all but one starter from last year’s runners-up squad.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong. After the loss to Virginia, big man Armando Bacot says part of the problem was being cursed by high expectations from the start, when UNC was ranked first in the country heading into the 2023 season.
"The story of this year was talking about last year."
— Pat Welter WRAL (@PatrickWelter) March 10, 2023
Armando Bacot on Carolina's season that was cursed by expectations from the start. He kept calling this his last game, but said he hasn't made decision. Said would play NIT but doesn't want to #UNC #ACCTournament pic.twitter.com/hrT9oxwY5V
Armando Bacot laments UNC’s “hangover” season of disappointment and regret
The Tar Heels may now become the first No. 1 ranked team to miss out on the NCAA Tournament since (it’s only fitting, we guess) another North Carolina team, the 1974-75 NC State Wolfpack.
Is this not the same team that ended Mike K’s career in the Final Four? Clearly not, after Duke completed its regular season sweep of North Carolina a week ago.
Carolina’s painful loss to Virginia, viewed through one lens as an NCAA Tournament dream-dashing defeat, could also be viewed as the final bullet that put the under-achieving Tar Heels out of their misery. At the rate they were shooting outside the arc, they weren’t going far.
Northwestern transfer Pete Nance, brought in to try to fill Brady Manek’s shoes, fell short of the former UNC forward’s 40 percent 3-point shooting, and the team as a whole lacked the morale-boosting unity, the grit and resilience of the year before.
Tar Heels’ sharp-shooting folk hero, Caleb Love, who fired an arrow through Duke’s heart in the Final Four, lost his edge and saw his efficiency stats plummet. So far this year, Carolina is ranked a pitiful 321st in the country in 3-point shooting, easily one of the worst seasons in the school’s program history.
Bacot is 100 percent right: “The story of this year was talking about last year.” Coupled with some god-awful beyond-the-arc shooting.
In the end, the Tar Heels couldn’t escape the gripping shadow of 2022’s magical run and should relish the opportunity to rewrite their narrative next season.
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