I am extremely worried about the University of North Carolina men's basketball team. I realize that in today's fraught times there are much more objectively important things to be worried about, but I can't help it, and like R.E.O. Speedwagon, I can't fight this feeling anymore. Somehow, I was made aware of these feelings by the recent transfer decision of Ven-Allen Lubin, who left Chapel Hill to move to Raleigh and join NC State.
To explain why Lubin trading in Carolina blue for Wolfpack red is so distressing, I need to begin at the beginning. I've loved UNC since before I can even remember. I couldn't tell you what exactly drew me to the Tar Heels at first, because I grew up on Long Island and I had no family connection to them whatsoever. I inherited my mom's love for the New York Mets, and my dad wasn't a big sports fan, but it must have been something else that drew me to UNC. I've always credited Dean Smith, the legendary coach whose first name is now my eldest son's middle name.
Regardless of how I came into my fandom, I absorbed every bit of the UNC fan experience that I could. I considered myself a Tar Heel born, even if I wasn't technically a Tar Heel bred. Once high school came around and it was time to look at colleges, there was only one place I wanted to go, even though I'd never spent any significant time out of New York and had never stepped foot in North Carolina. I took one visit to campus, and that was enough to tell me that Chapel Hill was the place for me. When I found out that I had been accepted, nothing else mattered. I had always been a Tar Heel, but now I was going to make it official.
My freshman year coincided with the 2001-02 season, which just so happened to be the worst season, by a long shot, in UNC history. The Heels went 8-20 that year, and as someone who has always been a superstitious fan, I blamed myself for showing up and ruining a good thing. I attended every game I could and suffered along with everyone else.
Thankfully, things turned as I got closer to earning my degree. The Heels went 19-16 a year later, which was still far below their usual standards, but at least it wasn't 8-20. It wasn't enough to save Matt Doherty though, and Roy Williams arrived to save the day shortly after the season ended. I was part of the crowd outside that welcomed him to the Dean Dome for his introductory press conference. When I saw him being interviewed on Pardon the Interruption from my room on the second floor of Stacy dorm, I got up and ran all the way down to the stadium because I recognized the trophy room that he was sitting in. Against all odds, I caught him as he came out the door and yelled, breathless, that we were so happy to have him.
Are these the actions of a sane person? No, but love can make you do crazy things.
Roy's arrival put the Heels back where they belonged: on top of the sport. He won a national title in 2005, my senior year, and though I had the opportunity to go to St. Louis and watch the Final Four in person, I figured that I would never have the chance to experience a national championship on campus as a student again. I rushed Franklin Street when we beat that outstanding Deron Williams-led Illinois team, and it was the best feeling in the world.
I graduated just over a month later, and though I moved back to New York to take a job, I knew that I needed to end up close to campus when it was all said and done. I moved to Raleigh in 2010 and haven't looked back.
I'll admit that Carolina basketball has had an outsized influence on my life and happiness. I can still tell you details from when we won the national title in 2009 and 2017. I've been in the building for some of the biggest games in program history. The wins, like the Final Four victory over Duke in 2022, were some of the happiest moments of my life. The losses, though, such as when Villanova's Kris Jenkins drilled a buzzer-beater to erase Marcus Paige's miracle shot in 2016, hurt just as badly, if not more.
When the Heels are good, I'm a happy man. When they're great, I'm on top of the world. On the rare occasion that they don't live up to that standard, I won't go so far as to say I'm miserable, but let's just say that I no longer see the silver lining in things.
The bad moments for the Tar Heels are getting dangerously close to eclipsing the good ones
I give you all of that biographical information as proof of my love for Carolina. I'm a Tar Heel through and through, and will defend the university, the team, the players and the coaches to the death. Having a love like that means having to be honest, though, which compels me to say the following: it feels like we're in big trouble.
The warning signs have been there, but Carolina fans have actively avoided seeing them. Roy's last couple of years weren't great. UNC went 14-19 in 2020, but that putrid season was saved to some degree by the NCAA Tournament being canceled due to COVID (how's that for a silver lining?). In his final year, the Heels went 18-11 and got bounced in the first round. When Ol' Roy pulled a surprise retirement on April Fool's Day, Carolina fans thought it was a prank, but it was very real.
Hubert Davis had been Roy's assistant for nine years when he got the call to replace him. It was a fitting choice, and a bridge from Dean Smith, whom Hubert had played for in the early '90s, to Roy, to the future. Carolina has always kept their coaching hires in the family, and there was no better choice than Hubert.
Hubert's four years in charge have been wildly inconsistent. That's a sharp departure from where the Heels used to be when Dean was delivering a Sweet Sixteen at minimum every year and Roy was rolling off three national titles in the span of 13 years.
The highs have been incredible. The Final Four win over Duke in 2022, as an 8-seed, no less will never be topped, and I don't feel bad saying that. Hubert took a heavy underdog against an archrival with a player that would go No. 1 in the NBA Draft just a few months later, and he not only beat them in Cameron Indoor Stadium in Mike Krzyzewski's final home game, he did it again in the Final Four to give him an early retirement.
Those wins will live forever, but would they be even sweeter if we hadn't blown a 16-point lead to Kansas in the national championship game? You betcha.
It's hard to quibble with a man responsible for the most satisfying win in program history, but it's also impossible to ignore just how little that win did for the Heels long-term. Carolina supposedly ended the rivalry with Duke in one fell swoop, but the Blue Devils only seem to have gotten stronger since then. The Heels were ranked No. 1 in the next preseason poll, then became the first team to hold that distinction and miss the tournament entirely.
UNC was a 1-seed in 2024, but got knocked out by Alabama in the Sweet Sixteen. This past year, we were the last team in the tournament, with fans of other programs crying foul after we got in while our athletic director was the tournament committee chairman. A blowout win over San Diego State in the First Four was quickly erased by losing a winnable game against 6-seed Ole Miss in the first round.
For every good thing the Heels have accomplished under Hubert, there's always been a "yeah, but" to pull them back. That's not the Carolina way, and unless we want to go the same way as Nebraska football, something needs to change.
How can the Tar Heels be a national power when they're falling behind the teams in their own backyard?
This is not a hit piece on Hubert Davis. Some have called for a change to be made, but I won't pretend to know better than the people calling the shots. Hubert is, by all accounts, a gem of a person and an obviously outstanding Tar Heel that has poured his heart and soul into the team and the university. If being great means chasing people like that away, I question what we're even doing.
That being said, I and every other Carolina fan that is honest with themselves has been worried about the way things have been going for a while. The Heels had a magical run in 2022, but they did it as an 8-seed, which is hardly a model for sustainable success. Missing the tournament one year later was a brutal look, and sneaking in as an 11-seed this past season wasn't that much better.
Carolina is losing on the recruiting trail, and even when we win, it feels like we just completely misuse our young talent. Ian Jackson and Drake Powell were both five-star recruits a year ago. Though Jackson was arguably our best player for a long stretch, he fell completely out of favor by late in the season, and when he did play, he made little to no impact while looking completely disengaged. Now he's at St. John's after unsurprisingly entering the transfer portal.
Powell was our best defender and our best athlete last year, but after a season of middling production in which he didn't seem to develop much at all, he's gone to the NBA Draft while not exactly having glowing things to say about his time in Chapel Hill.
Even Elliot Cadeau is gone after transferring to Michigan. Though Cadeau sometimes drove Carolina fans crazy for his immature fouls and propensity to turn it over, he's a seriously talented point guard that the team will miss greatly.
Meanwhile in Durham, Duke continues to have its pick of the top recruits in the country every year. Cooper Flagg is gone to the NBA, where he's a lock to be the No. 1 overall pick, but the Blue Devils will be fine, as they'll be welcoming the top recruiting class in the country, led by the Boozer twins, Cameron and Cayden, in addition to three other four-star players.
NC State is a serious threat to Carolina
Jon Scheyer has Duke in a great place, but what really worries me is what the other local team is doing. NC State hired Will Wade away from McNeese State after the former LSU coach got the Cowboys to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and led them to their first ever tournament win this past year. That move scares me.
Wade has his issues off the court, as his involvement in the Adidas FBI wiretapping scandal clearly showed. In today's age of NIL, though, paying players is no longer a scandal, it's celebrated. One thing I know is that he can coach, and he has his sights set directly on UNC.
Carolina fans like to pretend that State doesn't matter. That's why if you listen closely to a UNC-State game you can usually hear a chant of "Not our rivals!" coming from the blue section. It's always been a bad look for us, but I fear it's about to get worse, because for the first time in my life, State may have the coaching advantage over Carolina.
Our head-in-the-sand philosophy has extended into how we're dealing with Lubin betraying us to join the Pack. I've seen more Carolina fans than I can count online in the last few days stating confidently that we'll be better off without Lubin, and that he was never an impact player anyway.
I watch every game, and I can say in all honesty that I have no idea what these supposed Carolina fans are talking about. Lubin filled the gap left by Armando Bacot's graduation beyond any of our wildest expectations, especially in the second half of the year, when his efficient offensive game bailed a deeply flawed team out on numous occasions.
The Heels had no other center worth playing last year, and though we landed Arizona's Henri Veesaar in the transfer portal, you can't tell me that we're better off without Lubin at all. He's a good player and a good kid, and though I'm just as shocked and confused as the next fan as to why he committed such an act of Tobacco Road treason, we'd be foolish to think there aren't good reasons.
Dontrez Styles is another former Tar Heel that went on to play for NC State, but he was a little-used reserve who transferred to Georgetown first. Lubin's move hits different, and I worry that it's a crossing the Rubicon moment for this rivalry.
Thanks to all of the outgoing transfers mentioned above, plus the graduation of RJ Davis, next year's Heels are going to be almost completely unrecognizable. Five-star freshman Caleb Wilson is en route, but he'll be surrounded by guys that quite frankly, we're not familiar with yet. Plus it remains to be seen if the coaching staff will alienate him in the same way they did Jackson and Powell.
State, meanwhile, is stocking up, with several high-profile transfers on the way to join Lubin. The Wolfpack is undoubtedly a team on the rise, while the Heels look like a program in decline.
I'm extremely worried about the state of Carolina basketball, and I don't know what the solution is. Duke was supposed to be dead and buried after what we did to them in the Final Four, but they're still a national power. If NC State surpasses us, too (I'm picturing Lubin hanging 20 and 10 on us when we visit Raleigh for our only scheduled meeting next season), heads are going to roll. I don't want Hubert gone, but he needs to figure out what's wrong and fix it, fast.