The North Carolina men’s basketball team will participate in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2012. Or, if you ask most North Carolina fans, it will be their first Regional in eons.
After the Tar Heels dispatched the Arkansas Razorbacks in the West Region in the second round, it assured that the players on the regular playing rotation will taste the second week of the NCAA Tournament for the first time. It comes after a season which saw them lose 11 games and, after losing the ACC Tournament title game to Notre Dame, having to eke out a two-point win against Harvard in their first tournament game on Thursday.
If you’re a Carolina blue blue-blood, that’s far from vintage Tar Heels.
“Our fans expect us to have a No. 1 seed overall every single year,” said Marcus Paige, who scored 22 points to lead the Heels to Los Angeles for Thursday’s West Regional semifinal against top seed Wisconsin.
But keeping things in perspective, Paige added: “We understand the moment, and you’ve got to win six games. Once you’re slotted in the tournament and you’re in position, it’s up for grabs. Even if we have a bad regular season to Carolina standards, you can make up some ground for that by playing well in the tournament and making things happen late in the season.”
It’s not as if the program isn’t used to that exact sort of thing happening. In 2000, under head coach Bill Guthridge, UNC went into the tournament with 13 losses, a No. 8 seed and enough pressure from Carolina fans to crack skulls. Four wins later, including a win over top-seeded Stanford, the Tar Heels were in Indianapolis for the Final Four. (Indy also happens to be the site of this year’s Final Four.)
Unfortunately for the Heels, the Matt Doherty era started after Guthridge retired after the 2000 run, and Carolina immediately embarked on a five-year run of not making the Regionals, their longest such drought since a nine-year run away from Regional semifinals between 1958 and 1966. After Carolina missed the NCAA Tournament entirely in 2002 and 2003, Doherty “resigned” after the 2003 season, leaving Roy Williams as the prodigal son who would have to revive the program – something he has done, adding two more national championships to Carolina’s haul (2005, 2009).
The dry spell at the turn of the century is a time that stands out for all the wrong reasons almost as much as the Dean Smith era stood out for its sustained excellence. History lesson in mind, some of the players know their “first step” is only just that.
“Obviously, we’re not content,” Paige told us in the locker room. “We’re hungry for more, We have to give Wisconsin, assuming it’s Wisconsin, a hell of a battle.”
Responding to a question about Carolina not getting past the first weekend, Tar Heel Roy Williams defended his more recent clubs while giving his own brief history lesson.
“Let’s not have a misconception: these kids have had a pretty doggone good run for the last three years,” Williams said, going back to a previous question asked in the postgame press conference. “We’ve won 25, 24, and 26, and I’m not getting on the young man down here about his question, but a lot of teams would like that, and we have had some problems.”
Problems such as injuries and a high-profile suspension of P.J. Hairston in 2013 have dampened the team’s Final Four hopes since their run to the Elite Eight in 2012.
“Well, in 2012, John Calipari and I could have a great discussion because I thought we were the best team in the country, but we can’t show that because John has got the ring and his players deserved it,” Williams added, referring to Kentucky winning the title and Carolina losing in the Elite Eight to Kansas.
Williams added: “The injuries did hurt us at that time and then the last two years we’ve had some tough times. We had to go small, we lost Reggie (Bullock) and P.J., and after Marcus’s freshman year, I was dumb enough to make a statement I wouldn’t trade our perimeter guys we’ll have next year for anybody in the country because we were going to have Marcus and Reggie and P.J.”
“And then I looked around and we didn’t have either one of them, so that’s — what you’re talking about there I can understand, but boy, I feel really good about what these kids have done this year in a really difficult league.”
The Atlantic Coast Conference currently is 9-0 after Saturday’s play in the NCAA Tournament, giving the Tar Heels even more reason to believe this team is finally ready to seize the Sweet 16 spotlight. Carolina fans just have to wait five days to see what they haven’t been able to experience is three years.
Or, to Carolina fans, an eternity.
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[Cover photo (Carolina players and Roy Williams) courtesy of Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images]
