When we look back at this basketball season, unexpectedly long as it was, it’s the almosts we’ll remember.
That seems vaguely obtuse, to remember the things that weren’t done. But how close this season — already with its own place in history — came to being truly unprecedented and nearly unreplicable defines how good it actually was.
North Carolina almost winning a national title after looking at one point like the Tar Heels might miss the tournament entirely.
Duke almost getting to the final hurdle in Mike Krzyzewski’s final season, finding new strength after stumbling into the tournament.
The N.C. State women almost capping a historic three-year run by making it to the Final Four for the first time in 24 years.
In each case, it’s how close they came, and how they eventually fell, that will stand out years from now, with North Carolina’s ultimate victory over Duke in one of the most memorable Final Four games of all time atop the list.
The glory of that for the Tar Heels, and the sting of it for the Blue Devils, will linger for a generation, exacerbated by North Carolina’s win in Krzyzewski’s final Cameron game. But there was more than that, enough for both teams to look back without regret.
Yes, Duke fell short, and suffered grand embarrassment at the hands of its rivals, but the Blue Devils still checked some boxes — Duke’s first ACC regular-season title since 2010 and its first Final Four since 2015, ending a Final Four drought that threatened to become the longest of Krzyzewski’s entire career.
And when it looked like Duke was crumbling under that pressure, especially in the ACC title game against Virginia Tech, the Blue Devils rallied to beat Michigan State and Texas Tech in the same situations where they had previously failed. Say what you want about the loss to the Tar Heels in New Orleans; the Blue Devils might have lost, but they most certainly did not capitulate.
If Duke now heads into a new and uncertain era under the leadership of Jon Scheyer, the Tar Heels feel a lot better about the beginning of the Hubert Davis regime than they did six weeks ago. They’ll have the two wins over Duke to sate their fans’ lust for rivalry superiority, but the way North Carolina responded to Davis’ constant encouragement and positivity suggests that Davis may have tapped into a new paradigm for coaching in the transfer-portal era, one based less on power and intimidation and more on genuine enthusiasm.The regular-season results may have been mixed at best, but once the Tar Heels hit their stride, they never looked back, finding a way to avoid total collapse against Baylor and coming from behind to beat UCLA. Those players — with the addition of Brady Manek, a transfer jackpot — became the team that Roy Williams thought they would be a year ago, and retired when they were not. They became the team that Davis believed they could be, and more.
Under normal circumstances, making it as far as they did might raise the bar unduly high for Davis going forward; given the extreme criticism he faced this season from his own fanbase, it had the opposite effect, giving Davis the reservoir of goodwill going forward he didn’t have when this season started slowly.
Both of those seasons ended in the Final Four, meeting the standards we have come to expect in this state. Duke and North Carolina have now accounted for five of the ACC’s past seven Final Four berths, four of its five finalists and two of its past three champions.
The N.C. State men aren’t part of that conversation, but their women nearly were. Connecticut needed double overtime to get past the Wolfpack in front of a very partisan home crowd in Bridgeport, Conn., the Huskies’ 14th straight Final Four. The game was an instant classic that will be discussed for a long time; the furious anger of both N.C. State and the ACC that a No. 1 seed and conference champion had to play a road game will last even longer.
N.C. State fans have spent a lot of time complaining about the NCAA over the past year. The damage at the College World Series was largely self-inflicted, even if the NCAA handled the situation exceedingly poorly. The NCAA had nothing to do with the unplayed Holiday Bowl, an unfortunate circumstance all around. But UConn getting a home game? Blame the NCAA all you want for letting that happen. It was a travesty.
Louisville, a lower No. 1 seed than the Wolfpack, dodged UConn, went to Wichita and made the Final Four. N.C. State’s three-year run ended because it was sacrificed on the altar of a program so powerful in the women’s game it exerts its own gravitational force. This group was denied a chance to play in the NCAA tournament in 2020, couldn’t overcome a key injury in 2021 and was given an uphill road to the Final Four in 2022. There will be some rebuilding now for the Wolfpack, but this group earned its place in history.
So did North Carolina and Duke, for different reasons but with the same lingering regrets. But for all three, it was a return to the standards all three programs expect to uphold on an annual basis, under any circumstances.
The almosts will linger as long as the victories, but only because it’s a sense of how memorable this season was, and how close it was to not only unforgettable but unbeatable.
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