Everything that happened during North Carolina’s season occurred in the 71-64 loss to Ole Miss.
The good. The bad. The “What the hell are they doing?”
The Tar Heels started the game looking poised to play 40 minutes of hero ball, and the Rebels were here for it.
Ole Miss went up 14-4 before the Tar Heels could blink. An 11-3 run pushed the lead to 15 points. By halftime, North Carolina was down 18 points.
They looked like a team that was done with the season. A couple of players are definitely hitting the portal (trust me, you’ll see it soon).
When the Heels weren’t taking bad shots, they were turning the ball over and not playing defense.
The Rebels quickly increased their lead to 20 in the second half. Then Jae’Lyn Withers got hurt, and it looked like the Tar Heels were starting to board the bus back to the hotel.
Then something clicked.
North Carolina started defending, including a stretch of nearly six minutes in which Ole Miss didn’t score.
The ball and players started moving. Now, there were driving lanes, and shots began to fall. The Tar Heels chopped it to 11, then six, then two.
The team who carelessly managed their season and did the same for the first half of this one and, heck, the one in the ACC Tournament against Duke looked like they were desperate for it not to end.
But this is the 2024-25 version of North Carolina. A mistake was lurking around the corner.
With less than a minute to play and Ole Miss coming undone, Seth Trimble decided not to stay on Sean Pedulla’s hip. Pedulla sank a three-pointer and ended the Tar Heels season in the most poetic way.
North Carolina played like a team that wanted to pick and choose when to play winning basketball. At times, they looked clueless, at times apathetic. Then, at times, they looked like they remembered what uniform they were wearing and all the players who made that uniform special.
Unfortunately, that’s not how today’s college basketball works. There’s not a team that you can decide when to play and when not to play.
This team set themselves up for heartbreak, which happened today in the most undisciplined way possible.
