GREENVILLE, S.C. – Everything seemed possible for North Carolina on Feb. 7. Seth Trimble had just made his buzzer-beating 3-pointer to knock off Duke, freshman Caleb Wilson was playing his way into the National Player of the Year conversation and dreams of another banner to hang from the Smith Center rafters danced in the heads of Tar Heel Nation.
But like a roller coaster that reaches the top of a steep climb, UNC’s season quickly steamrolled into an equally dramatic descent.
A loss to Miami, two hand injuries that sidelined Wilson for the duration and bouts with inconsistency sapped whatever promise still remained for coach Hubert Davis and his team. It’s a pattern that was mirrored over the course of a single 45-minute melodrama played out Thursday night in a NCAA Tournament South Region game on the Bon Secours Wellness Center court.
There were plenty of early highs as sixth-seeded UNC rolled up a 19-point lead on 11th-seeded VCU, but they didn’t last. It was quickly buried under an avalanche of missed shots and defensive lapses as the Rams roared back to complete the biggest first-round comeback in NCAA Tournament history.
The Tar Heels went the final 2:44 of regulation and the entire overtime period without a field goal on the way to their second consecutive first-round elimination. The ending to their 82-78 loss was somehow fitting, with 7-foot junior center Henri Veesaar failing to hit the rim on a free throw he was trying to miss intentionally in a desperate effort to avoid defeat.
“It’s sad,” said 6-foot-3 senior guard Seth Trimble, his eyes red from tears, in the losing locker room. “You want to make a good run in March and this team had the ability to do it. But we fell short with the kind of things we struggled with all year. That’s the frustrating part.”
The Tar Heels’ biggest shortcoming, even before Wilson went down with a fractured hand in early February, then again with a broken thumb suffered in practice the day before the regular-season finale at Duke, was their inability to put together two solid games – and in some cases, two solid halves.
That inconsistency was vividly illustrated in their ACC Tournament quarterfinal loss to Clemson last week. That night, they fell behind by 18 in the second half, only to flip the switch and come a point away from completing a miracle comeback.
Thursday, the plot was reversed. With Veesaar and Trimble leading the way, UNC put together a near-perfect first half while limiting VCU to 34.5 percent shooting, forcing 10 turnovers and building a 39-28 lead. That advantage ballooned to 19 when Trimble converted a fastbreak layup with 14:58 left.
Then, suddenly, the Tar Heels took their foot off the accelerator. The collapse started on the defensive end, where the Rams made 15 of their final 19 shots, and eventually bled over to the offense as the lead began to shrink. The fluidity UNC used to establish its dominance evaporated into a stagnant march to an inevitable ending.
“We didn’t execute when it mattered the most. I didn’t execute when it mattered the most,” said Veesaar, an Arizona transfer who led UNC with 26 points and 10 rebounds but missed two free throws that could have tied it with four seconds left in overtime. “We didn’t move the ball well. They did a good job of switching and cutting off the paint and we just settled for outside shots that were contested. Those are the shots you have to knock down at the end of a game.”
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Tired legs during a second half in which Davis used only six players may have been a contributing factor to many of those misses, as well as UNC’s inability to cut off driving lanes and prevent Terrence Hill Jr. from getting open looks. Hill, a 6-foot-3 sophomore guard, was 7-of-10 from 3-point range and finished witha career-high 34 points.
Davis deflected a postgame question about his lack of second-half substitutions by saying “that was my decision” before dismissing the idea that his team ran out of gas with a similarly short answer.
“Mistakes were made,” he said. “That’s what helped (VCU) come back.”
Davis also deflected the subject of his program’s lack of postseason success since getting to the Final Four in 2022 in his first season at the helm of his alma mater, and of his increasingly uncertain future as Tar Heels coach.
“That’s a big thinking question, and I apologize; I’m just not there right now,” he said.
While Davis needed more time to process the big-picture implications of a game and a season that unraveled so quickly and dramatically, his senior leader was more reflective before taking off his UNC jersey for the final time.
“It was brutal how Caleb went out, as everybody knows,” Trimble said. “But that’s life. Things aren’t going to go your way and you’re going to have to push through and persevere. We found ways at times this year and I can be proud of that. But obviously there were a lot of things that didn’t go our way after (Wilson) went out.”
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