UNC Basketball: Tar Heels upset by Auburn Tigers in Sweet 16

The Midwest Region’s top-seeded Tar Heels fell to No. 5 Auburn on Friday night, losing 97–80. With UNC Basketball kicked out of the not-so-Sweet 16, it’s hard not to reflect on what brought such a promising ballclub to such a devastatingly abrupt end.

Repeats in sports are things of legendary lore, rare territory for any player or team or league to fall in, no matter what the sport or talent level is. Bottom line, repeating is difficult. Winning back-to-back championships, winning back-to-back honors, and making deep runs back-to-back are all equally improbable — so too is finding your season ended in a game in which you were completely and mercilessly ran out of the building as if you didn’t belong in it in the first place.

No. 1 UNC, hyped and heralded as they were heading into the 2019 NCAA Tournament (for good reason, I should add), found themselves in a setting that was all too familiar, a setting that left last year’s edition of Carolina blue distraught, devastated, and defeated. While the 2018 team suffered a blowout by a pack of overwhelming Aggie giants, the 2019 iteration were buried by an avalanche of Tiger three-pointers (17) that no Carolina team had ever witnessed before in the NCAA Tournament. For Bruce Pearl and the No. 5 Auburn Tigers, they managed to out-coach, out-play, and out-Carolina the Tar Heels in the 2019 Sweet 16, routing UNC 97–80 and beating Roy Williams at his own game.

Seventeen three-pointers, 97 points, and 1.347 points per possession — all season-worsts for a UNC defense that had launched itself to fifteenth on KenPom, key stats that celarly define the downfall of Chapel Hil’s prized ballclub. Led by Chuma Okeke (20 points, 11 rebounds, three triples), Malik Dunbar (13 points, three triples), Danjel Purifoy (12 points, four triples) and Jared Harper (nine points, 11 assists), Auburn’s offensive attack gave UNC no room to breathe nor any margin for error, running off turnovers (16 points scored off of 13 UNC turnovers) and firing away from deep whenever a Tar Heel defender gave up any room whatsoever.

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While the defense was horrendous, the offense wasn’t much better for the Tar Heels. Upperclassmen Luke Maye (13 points, seven rebounds) and Cameron Johnson (15 points) struggled to find the bottom of the net (combined 10-of-25 FG), freshman Nassir Little battled flu-like symptoms just to put up four points (2-of-7 FG), and freshman guard Coby White (13 points, four assists) played like an inexperienced freshman, going 4-of-15 from the field and 0-of-7 from beyond the arc. For a team whose ienditty revolves around rebounding, they only won the battle 40–36, an insignifcant margin that gave no benefit whatsoever. And, as famous as the speedy Carolina Break may be, it was wholly uneffective against Auburn, with UNC failing to net any fast break points (six total) compared to the Tigers (15 fast break points).

UNC was flat-out destroyed — just like last year.

Auburn now must look ahead to the next game, an Elite Eight matchup with gritty No. 2 Kentucky, with Okeke now injured and his status up in the air.

UNC, on the other hand, is heading home.

The Tar Heels, predictably, can’t help but look back at how they got here, back in the same spot they were last year, but now with more questions than ever. Last year’s loss to Texas A&M still left the Heels with three rising seniors and a promising recruiting class that brought in two talented freshmen. Those five players, though, are likely gone. Seniors Luke Maye, Cameron Johnson and Kenny Williams don’t have a choice but to leave; Coby White and Nassir Little do, but the allure of the National Basketball Association may be too much to turn down.

What comes next for UNC is shrouded in uncertainty. Roy Williams will likely hit the recruiting trail harder than ever, and will likely dip his toes into the graduate transfer pool in search of a playable vet to add to what currently projects to be a barren Carolina roster for the 2019-2020 season. Looking ahead is never a pleasurable proposition when pain is involved, but neither is looking back, not when it involves reflecting on such a sorrowful downfall.

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Games are dictated by breaks, and for the top-seeded Tar Heels, they rarely gained favorable ones in Friday’s loss. So is life during March Madness — unforgiving, unmerciful, unfaithful. Alas, that’s how sports work, for better or for worse.

You can’t win them all, although you damn sure wish you could.

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