Comet.

All losses hurt. Losses in March hurt worse. Losses like THAT ONE in March are especially cruel and agonizing. But it happened. It should not diminish what this season was.

And yes, let's get to the catharsis and exorcism part of this straight out the gate because all of us feel this way right now: Carolina should have been on the damn 4-line and hosting. Instead they had to trek up to the godforsaken wastes of Columbus. If that game had been played in Carmichael, it's different. The Heels got hosed on several calls, but three will be burned into our collective synapses for eternity: K-Mac being whistled for getting smacked in the face? Preposterous. That 5th foul on Des? Unconscionable. The phantom "moving screen" on T with the game almost literally on the line? Un. Freaking. Forgivable. If even one of those is just a no-call, the game is different.

 If just ONE of the cavalcade of bunnies UNC missed at the cup drops, the game is different.

And God knows if no one gets hurt, the game is absolutely, positively different.

It was about as tough a loss as I've ever seen.

But y'all, let's take a second to marvel over the end of that game. Eva and Deja went down injured within literal minutes of each other. That left the ensuing huddle absent both Carolina's leader/floor general/most reliable bucket and their best 3-point threat. They were down two starters and 12 points with just seven minutes left. And it was at that moment 'Lys and Toddy went full-tilt "eff it, let's just do it and be legends." They absolutely hounded the Buckeyes defensively and started furiously pouring in buckets on the other end. They ignited a 13-2 run down the stretch, stubbornly clawing the Heels back from the brink.

Deja miraculously reappeared with 2:33 to go. She'd been carried off the floor and limped to the locker room just five minutes previous, and a return had seemed extremely unlikely. Yet DK somehow flung herself at the rack on her one good leg, drew a foul, and drained both freebies, pulling the Heels within a point. Then P blazed to the cup off an OSU turnover and UNC had its first lead of the game, 67-66. The Buckeyes answered back, but Deja tied it back up at 69 all on a signature mid-range J.

Y'all know what happened after that and we don't need to dwell on it. The point is what this team did from the moment Eva left the court until the buzzer. Everything that could possibly have gone wrong up to that point had, in fact, gone wronger. An abysmal start, poor shooting, worse officiating, critical injuries. But for those last eight minutes, Carolina was incandescent. Or maybe incendiary is the more apt descriptor. They simply BURNED; an all-heart-no-quit comet blazing up and down the floor of Value City Arena.

There is a larger point, too, in how many people watched that glow. How many breaths were held, how many heart rates went into V-tach. That magical eight minutes, and everything that preceded it this season, was bigger than it was before.

During the broadcast of the game, they showed a highlight that almost instantly brought me to tears: Jamie Cherry draining a buzzer-beating J to beat Ohio State in The Dance in 2015. I was in the building for that shot, and I've been thinking about it a lot since they aired it again. More specifically, how much has changed.

What has happened since Courtney Banghart set foot in Chapel Hill is nothing short of a miracle. Ags and I have spent years watching somewhere between decent and really-freaking-good squads in Carmichael bust their asses up and down the floor with a lukewarm home atmosphere. There were loyal fans, but small in number and short on fervor. This year, Carmichael was much closer to a tent revival or a revelation.

Our barn was so loud, so passionate this season. And that was what Coach Bang and this team had been building to. Deja said it best in an interview she did with the Carolina Insider Video Pod, when they asked her about coming out to the first sold-out crowd in years against NC State: "We built this."

And they did. The thing about building is you have to get people involved, and this squad, this season, has done that. You could clock this on a macro level, with how packed Carmichael was this year game after game, and how loud. But the micro level is where the resonance and beauty lies.

Let me tell y'all about Jordan and Danielle. They hadn't been to many women's hoops games before last season. Went to a couple. Got season tix for this year. This team changed their lives for the better, and that's not hyperbole. After the Heels took that L to OSU on Monday, Jordan took a whole, heart-felt Twitter thread to talk about what this squad has meant. (I am not technically savvy enough to screenshot, but I am quoting directly here): "Becoming a season ticket holder wasn't as good as I thought it would be - it was FAR better. The best decision I've made in quite some time."

And let me tell y'all about my boy Josh who lives in FREAKING NEBRASKA and has never set foot in Chapel Hill, as far as I know. He's on this here Carolina Blue Train now. Probably because he got to talk to Toddy on Spaces a few times but mostly because I think him and a lot of other folks are getting it. They're seeing the joy and beauty in this team, and Carmichael, and all of it.

And there are so many more, so many faces I didn't recognize but who kept showing up this season.

That's the magic and transubstantiation this team worked this year. People who don't remember Jamie Cherry are feeling now like we felt about that shot. This team moves and shifts minds and hearts, it translates, it embraces and elevates everyone who chooses to bear witness, to love it. That got passed down from Charlotte Smith and Sylvia Crawley to Camille Little to Jamie Cherry to Jaelynn Murray, and from Jaelynn to this squad, to Deja and 'Lys and Toddy and Anya. We are bearing witness to Carolina Women's Basketball as handed down through generations. This is inheritance and osmosis. It's the comet we watched in that last eight minutes of this season writ large. A bright light streaking across our vision at high velocity, raising our eyes to the sky and the infinite possibilities up there.

Still Running.

 

 

What if Wile E. Coyote simply kept running? You've seen the bit a million times: The hapless furball chases the Roadrunner off the edge of a cliff, and for a few seconds he keeps right on going, unaware that he's no longer on solid ground. Then the realization sets in ... his feet stop churning ... he looks down ... there is a sad, direct-to-camera *boink boink* cartoon blink, and ... 

The Tar Heels came close to reenacting this moment twice this season.

The first was the horrific skid right around the holidays. UNC rebounded from a baffling 63-87 road loss to a Grace Berger-less Indiana with three straight victories over inferior non-con foes, but then everything took a precipitous turn.

A loss to Michigan in Charlotte, followed by three straight L's to open conference play. They were staggered and straggling, playing uncharacteristically uncertain basketball in a way Courtney Banghart's teams simply do not. It wasn't just that shots weren't falling or that they were coughing up too many turnovers. They didn't look sure of themselves, as if they didn't trust the set they were about to run even as they called it.

Then there was an almighty convulsion and a lurch of sheer will; the metaphysical version of yanking a plane out of a tailspin. We're never going to know what went down in the players-only meeting after a hard-fought road loss to the 'Canes in Coral Gables on January 5th, but whatever it was shifted this squad on a tectonic level.

There were portions of the ensuing Notre Dame game in Carmichael where the #4 Irish flat-out looked like they didn't belong on the floor with Carolina. Ditto for State, Duke (twice), and the absolute hammers UNC dropped on Clemson and Virginia. (The former of which finally saw the debut of Kayla McPherson, who is so terrifyingly fast that Paulina Paris threw an outlet pass a full eight feet behind her because P simply didn't clock how quick her burst in the open court was.)

I'm not sure there are words in any language that can fully convey the absurd luxury of bringing Kayla, P, Des, Teonni, and Lu OFF THE BENCH, but my GAWD the amount of different looks, versatility, and unending fresh legs and speed is something else.

There was the second near-fall, of course; where everything I just described evaporated in a wave of injuries. It turns out that when you remove Eva and 'Lys from this team for several games, it's really hard to win. Pair that with a road-heavy swing in the schedule and you get losses at Louisville, 'Cuse, and State. It looked like the wheels were coming off, and there was a shook, janky feeling to the games without two (and in one case three) starters. For the second time this season, this team was an uneasy watch, every game carrying a vague sense of foreboding.

Miraculously, though, the Heels got healthy in time to slug out one of the rock-fightin'-est games I've ever watched to spoil Duke's senior day and notch a regular-season sweep, and followed that up with their first ACC Tournament win since 2019 over Clemson. (What happened the game after that, you ask? Mind your own business and keep it moving, buddy.)

Twice this year, Carolina ran off the edge of the cliff. Twice, they could have looked down. The could have fallen. But they didn't. In a few hours, we'll find out if they get to host the first couple rounds of The Dance in Carmichael. It's worth an entirely separate piece on what that would mean and how utterly electric that place will be if it happens. But they're not in this position if they had glanced down and allowed gravity work. Instead, they just kept moving, kept pushing forward. And they're still running, clear off the cliff, sprinting across air that feels like solid ground.