There have been very few seasons in history, where you can say that North Carolina had a disappointing season.
There have been seasons where they didn’t meet expectations but the “d” word wasn’t appropriate.
Last season wasn’t one of those seasons.
The Tar Heels were sold to the nation as the preseason number-one team largely based on a six-game run in March.
They proved to be the team that was in danger of not making the NCAA tournament.
This season’s team won’t be saddled with any expectations beyond being better than last season’s 20-13 record.
Nine players are gone including the person who was the poster child of last season’s struggle, Caleb Love.
“As a team, we never gelled like we should have,” Bacot said this week, via The Field of 68. “I don’t think we did a good job of really trusting each other… [Team energy] is a personnel thing. All it takes is one guy in a locker room to be that guy. Cormac is that guy that can really bring it out of us.”
Inside Carolina
Notre Dame transfer, Carmac Ryan, has been one of the newbies who has been praised all offseason.
Ryan, along with, RJ Davis and Armando Bacot will be in the starting lineup come opening night.
One of the last two spots will probably go to Harrison Ingram (Stanford transfer). The last spot is up in the air.
It can be anyone from Jalen Washington to Zayden High to Paxson Wojcik (Brown transfer).
No matter who is the fifth starter, it’s reasonable for Hubert Davis to think that his starters will be more efficient than they were last season.
Roles will be more defined, something that wasn’t there last season between Love’s terrible shot selection, Leaky Black’s offensive limitations, and Puff Johnson’s inability to stay healthy.
Ryan and Wojcik should provide much-needed consistent three-point shooting. That should take pressure off of Davis to do anything. It should also open up some room inside for Bacot.
Washington will need to take a significant jump from last season’s inconsistent play to something Davis can depend on. With some of the dominant personalities gone, he should have more on an opportunity to contribute.
One of the things Davis needs to have the ability to do more is trust his freshmen. That means finding minutes for High and Elliott Cadeau.
They can’t rot at the end of the bench like Tyler Nickel did his freshman year. In today’s environment, that means a player will spend his sophomore year at a different school. Nickel quickly left out of Chapel Hill for Blacksburg (Virginia Tech).
In most places, all the changes would provide a large dose of anxiety but not in Chapel Hill. There is more of a sense of relief.
A fresh start for a program that needed more subtraction than addition.
