Lucas: One At A Time

By Adam Lucas

LOS ANGELES--Not too long ago—but longer than I'd like to pretend—every season-ending loss came with just the tiniest bit of hope. There was a certain progression that could be expected, and could fill those empty June and July days with optimism. Next year's team was built on the foundation of this year's team.

Just wait until Vince Carter's game matures a little.

Danny Green is going to play a big role next year.

Sure, Marcus Paige was great as a freshman, but he'll be even better as a sophomore.

We don't get to do that anymore. Players leave. Players arrive. One year ago today there is no chance you thought Cormac Ryan would be one of the most indispensable players for the 2024 Tar Heels, and there is no chance that anyone—including Hubert Davis—knows exactly who will be the most important Tar Heels on this date in 2025.

We can hope. Elliot Cadeau would be a dynamic sophomore and Harrison Ingram would be a Lynch-like senior and a fifth year of RJ Davis would be…wow.

But we don't know. So all there is to do is appreciate the team we have. And fortunately, this one has made it easy. Say whatever you want about the 2024 Tar Heels, but you have to say this: they were fun to watch. At a time when it was reasonable to wonder if Carolina basketball could still be Carolina basketball…they were. RJ Davis was the star and no one really seemed to mind, and Davis and Armando Bacot made room in the leadership circle for Ryan and Harrison Ingram, and they ran and passed and shared the ball and defended and grinned and fought and…

And won a lot, too. A fun one over Tennessee at home. A couple of gritty wins over Pitt. Any Saturday home game at the Smith Center. A pair of wins over Duke. A tough victory over Michigan State.

It wasn't just the wins. It was the way they carried themselves, right until the end. In the wake of shooting 4-for-20, RJ Davis was struggling through the postgame press conference.

"I just wasn't good enough today," he said. Then Cormac Ryan interrupted him.

"I've got to chime in here," Ryan said. "You guys can write whatever you want about tonight's game. You could talk about RJ, you could talk about the stats, you could talk about whatever.

"We would not be in this position today without RJ Davis and Armando Bacot. Carolina wouldn't be in this position today without those two guys. There's just not a true fiber in your being that could actually believe that anything that happened tonight could be the result of something RJ did wrong, because RJ's done stuff that's never been done before. He's one of the greatest Tar Heels of all time. And for anybody to come up and say anything negative about RJ is unacceptable, and I'm just going to say that."

That's a teammate. That also goes a long way towards explaining why they played the way they did. And now we have to wonder if the Tar Heels will have a player like that on the roster next year. How do you even identify that characteristic in recruiting? Carolina needs more of it. Heck, the world needs more of it.

Losing to Alabama hurt mostly because we didn't get enough time with this group. How could you not want to see three more games of a team that treated each other that way?

Even in the loss they were tough. It's not amazing that Carolina lost. It's amazing that they lost only by two while struggling to the third worst shooting half in Tar Heel NCAA Tournament history (25 percent in the second half), while RJ Davis went 0-for-9 from three, while open dunks and layups were missed, while a guy on the other team who had scored six points in the entire NCAA Tournament scored 24...and it was still only a two-point game. Close enough, in other words, to make it hurt as much as possible.

Seasons used to operate on a rotating four-year cycle. Now they are entirely self-contained. And this last half a decade might be the strangest five years in Tar Heel basketball history. 2020 was ended by Covid. 2021 had the remnants of Covid and the retirement of a Hall of Fame head coach. 2022 was the Duke Final Four year, of course. 2023 was the year it didn't quite fit together. 2024 was putting it back together again.

And then there is off the court. For each of us, certain seasons will always be connected to certain life events. You know the type. Maybe it was the team from your senior year in college or the year you got married. My grandfather died near the end of the 1998 regular season, and I will never forget feeling certain that I saw him from afar at the Greensboro regionals the next month. I once was admonished by a helpful fan for dancing with my not yet one-year-old daughter to "Jump Around" during the '04 season. We kept dancing.

No matter what else it became, 2024 was always the season without Eric Montross. On the trip to Boston College in January, something funny happened and my first inclination was to text him. Later that month, former teammate Pat Sullivan said after a win at FSU, "I keep waiting for him to sit down next to me on the plane. And he never shows up."

It was like that all year. People were incredibly nice. Other programs and broadcast crews were so kind. But missing him never went away. The Carolina head coach didn't talk about this in public, but he felt it, too. Something in the Smith Center was off. Imagine what he did, preparing this team day after day and working his way onto national coach of the year lists while dealing with the grief from his friend but also from his uncle.

There was a home game in January when the Tar Heels were rolling and the Smith Center was rocking. And I looked around and wondered how this game could be that important when we were all going to walk outside and Eric wouldn't be there. It was fun, yes, because this team played in a way that was fun to watch. But at that moment it seemed like a distraction more than it seemed truly important. It didn't seem possible that putting a ball in a basket could matter very much when a daughter was missing her daddy and a family was missing their foundation.

But then, in February, through sheer coincidence, I sat in the Smith Center in close proximity to a family member of Molly Rotunda. And before either of us knew anything about the other, we were high-fiving after big baskets and jeering bad calls and just doing what fans do. Being normal, even when his life was shattered. From the outside, he looked like any other Tar Heel.

Eventually, we got to talking. And he told me about Molly, a Carolina student and beloved daughter and giant Eric Church fan who died in a tragic car accident on January 21. It seemed very obvious that Molly and Eric Montross would have been great friends, probably would have loved to sit at a game just like that one and watch their Heels.

"This," said the family member, gesturing at the court and the players and Rameses and the community that had come together to watch it all, "has really helped us."

I would like to tell you that it is healing, but it isn't. It hasn't healed. But I can tell you that he's right. It has helped. In December it felt weird to mention Eric's name. And by the end of the season we were telling funny Eric stories and when Carolina thumped Duke at Cameron two weeks ago, there was Sullivan bursting out of the locker room right after the win.

"The big fella," he shouted, "loved that one!"

This team gave us something that seemed impossible in December. It gave us permission to smile without feeling guilty.

So some days are better than others just like some games are better than others in the same way that some seasons are better than others. If we're lucky, we'll get another one—of all the above—with all the people who we want to be there.

I already miss the season more right now than I thought was possible. It was a connection, and now one bad shooting night in Los Angeles has severed that connection. The season provides a structure of practices and games and road trips and those dates are on the calendar and can't be moved. Now the calendar is wide open, and there are empty days and weeks and months, and that time is overwhelming. Carolina basketball helped—it didn't fix it, but it helped—and now there is no more Carolina basketball.

So let's get something on the calendar. Let's make a deal to meet back here in October. All of us—family and friends and those we only see at games.

And until then? The only way to approach those blank squares on the calendar is the same way to think about the next basketball season. Tomorrow might be great and so might the 2025 Tar Heels, but today we have no idea. So there's only one way to approach it:

One at a time. All the time.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Elliot Cadeau

RJ Davis

Harrison Ingram

Cormac Ryan

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