Thank You, Jaelynn Murray.

 "The game can’t save you. But practice, though: practice can. Practice is hard, practice requires work, but practice keeps things alive — in games, in kindness, in love ... What’s left is what’s practiced, what’s passed down, what is carried along when everything else is left behind." - Spencer Hall.

Jaelynn Murray laced 'em up for UNC for the first time on November 10, 2017, in a 70-66 loss to Hampton. It was a different team, a different coach, and what feels like a lifetime ago. She started most of the games her freshman year, and then a cavalcade of bad injury luck and just plain poor circumstances put her in a reserve roll for the rest of her Tar Heel career. Your eyes won't pop looking at any of her box scores, but y'all, it needs to be said out loud and full-chest that she's probably the most important player in what Carolina has become since she stepped on campus.

Teams take on the identity of their coaches, certainly. That manifests in offensive philosophy, in defensive hustle, in the HOW of on-court performance and off-court workouts and all the general hoops ephemera that makes a basketball team sing. No one who has watched this team would deny that Courtney Banghart's imprint on the Heels has been one of excellence and sheer joy. Going from a team that occasionally shocked better teams and made The Dance but lost opening weekend fairly consistently to a team that just went four quarters against South Carolina in a Sweet Sixteen match-up and did not back down an inch is a massive accomplishment and it doesn't happen without Coach Bang. But it also, very much, does not happen without Jaelynn Murray.

If you watched the pre-game-get-hype huddles in the tunnel at Carmichael, you noticed that Jaelynn was the emotional centrifuge at the heart of them. If you went to road games and a "TAR!! HEELS!!" chant got started, Jaelynn was the one standing up off the bench and raising her arms up, urging us on. Come on, y'all can do better, be louder, give us our love. Her joy was infectious and powerful for her teammates and the fans alike. She was a nuclear reactor of good vibes that detonated every game and shone a light we all reflected.

When Jaelynn was out for the 2019-2020 season with a knee injury, Janelle Bailey switched from her number 44 to Jaelynn's number 30 uni for the year to make sure she was always on the court with the Heels in spirit, if not in actuality. That's the level of importance she had for this program. That's a kind of special you just don't see that often, but that's who Jaelynn Murray is. The engine and propulsive force that moves the team, whether she sees the floor or not on a given night.

On Senior Night this year, you could feel the Jaelynn Effect on full, Marshall-Stack Amplifier levels. The thing she's taught this team over her time here is not effort; you don't get to be a high-level athlete without that baked into your DNA; it's the more subtle but more important lesson that effort plus joy for you and those around you and fighting towards a common goal with you has a cumulative effect. That playing the game is not as important as the people you play it with. She has been the heartbeat, and everyone else picked up that pulse. That's why, if you looked at the bench when Jaelynn subbed in while Carolina was smoking Duke that afternoon, you saw her teammates going absolutely bonkers when she started putting in buckets. There is not a column for soul or resonance in a box score, but UNC has one in their collective hearts every game. And that came from Jaelynn Murray.

That's the legacy she left when the horn sounded Friday night against South Carolina. Deja and 'Lys and Toddy and Anya and Lu and Carlie and Eva and Des and Mo and Alex and Ariel, Teonni and Kayla (even though they didn't get on the court this year). Her joy, her love, sings through everyone on that team. She left it to them, like a precious, secret heirloom. And they'll make sure the next kids who strap 'em up in Carmichael get it too; that they carry it forward.

This magical team we watched this year, and all the other iterations of Carolina Basketball that are coming after them; they're not what they are without Jaelynn Murray, without her vibes and verve and the way everyone else understood that they not only needed, but WANTED that same emotional level, every day, all the time. Thank you, Jaelynn Murray, for everything. Wherever life takes you next, your impact on this team will hang in Carmichael like a banner, which is to say it will be there forever.

Apotheosis, So Far.

 

South Carolina rolled up in Greensboro and beat our team. That happened, and we recognize it and move on. What this UNC team did this year has been maybe the most joyful, pure thing of my entire sports fan life. They played free and loose and maniacally beautiful offense and absolutely operated on a defensive string on the other end of the court. They fought to the buzzer, always. They loved and scrapped and played together, always. They were a beautiful, almost telepathic collective force of hooping wonder at all times, ALWAYS.

They kicked ass last night. Not enough to pull the dub, but damn well clear enough to put the rest of the nation on notice. South Carolina is, by any sane observance, the best team in the country, and the Heels stood toe to toe with them for four quarters in a Sweet Sixteen game and did not flinch. Even in significant foul trouble, they were aggressive and focused and played the game the way they wanted to play it. There were some trips to the stripe where they could've put the ball in more consistently (this has been a thing all year) and I don't even want to think about the second quarter shooting splits, but even playing an uneven, janky game, Carolina hung with the best in the land.

And here's the thing: This is very much a beginning and not at all a one-off fluke. Deja Kelly went nuclear last night and that's not going to change. Toddy and 'Lys played slightly below their offensive peaks but were killer-murder-velociraptors on defense, like they always are. Carlie and Eva were uneven but brilliant in stretches, and Alex and Anya played their tails off trying to contain the force of nature that is Aliyah Boston.

UNC hadn't been this far in The Dance in a good while, and last night they proved they belong not just in the conversation, but as a main talking point. And the whole world saw and recognized it. This squad put everyone on notice this season. Next year will be transcendent.

A few other notes from my experience last night: 

 

1. Ags was not feeling well so I went to the game solo. I wound up sitting in a sea of South Carolina fans, and I totally get why Dawn calls them "Fams" now. They were delightful, kind, lovely folks who talked hoops and shot the shit with me all game like we'd known each other forever. At the half, I got up to go get a beer and a hotdog, and the woman on the end of the row letting me by said "y'all have a great team, I feel a little bad you're in the middle of all of us by yourself." I told her they were way more pleasant than most of the NC State fans who come to Carmichael once a year and that I was happy to be sitting with them. Her response: "Oh honey, we have to deal with Clemson fans, I get it." That woman is a national treasure.

2. Sports are f***ed up and we all know it. For the most recent example, you need only Google Deshaun Watson. College sports in particular exist on the far end of the horrific, exploitative spectrum. We compromise daily by loving our teams, none of whom are blameless or without flaws, no matter how much we want to tell ourselves otherwise. But when the game ended last night, something really cool happened: The arena staff put then end of the Saint Peter's/Purdue men's game on the jumbotron and every TV in the concourse. Two fan bases who had just spent the past two hours rooting against each other dropped their respective heartbreak and elation in a heartbeat and the whole place was suddenly screaming their lungs raw for a small New Jersey school none of us had heard of two weeks ago. When the Peacocks pulled out that win, we all, collectively, went bonkers. That was a MOMENT, y'all.

And that's why me and every other Tar Heel was in that barn last night. Not for the Saint Pete's thing, but to watch UNC Women's Basketball sweat and grind and work and to watch Deja Kelly become a goddess on a national stage and to watch this amazing team stand tall and take every punch South Carolina threw and to answer, right to the end of the horn. We were there for the MOMENT, and even though the final score didn't end favorably, the MOMENT was special.