NEW ORLEANS — The most enduring moment of North Carolina’s 72-69 national championship game defeat against Kansas, the moment that epitomized the kind of perseverance and never-quit spirit that led the Tar Heels to the season’s final Monday night, came with less than a minute remaining and UNC still hoping, still fighting.
It was then when Armando Bacot, the Tar Heels’ junior forward, attempted to make a move toward the basket. Already, Bacot had limped his way through 38 minutes of pain to help give UNC a chance. Already, he’d mostly ignored, as best he could, the agony emanating from his right ankle, where he’d suffered an injury late in UNC’s victory Saturday against Duke.
When he hurt himself then, with about four and a half minutes to play during the Tar Heels’ triumph against the Blue Devils in a national semifinal, the pain became so unbearable Bacot feared he was done for the night. Indeed, he said here on Sunday, “I wasn’t even thinking about coming back into the game.”
He did, though, and just before he re-entered it a camera caught Bacot sharing a kind of philosophical mantra that helped guide him back to the court. That mantra consisted of two words, the first of which contained four letters and the second of which was the word “it” — as in, “(expletive) it.”
“I think I was talking to Caleb (Love) or R.J. (Davis) — I was talking to somebody,” Bacot said Sunday. “They were saying like, ‘Yo, you sure you can come back in? You sure you’re good?’ And I was like ‘F it.’ There’s four minutes left (to play) for the national championship.
“Why not play? That’s really what that was all about.”
Bacot’s injured ankle became one of the most important questions facing the Tar Heels entering Monday night, if not the most important one: Would he be able to play? And, if so, how effective could he be?
Concerning the first, there was little doubt. Bacot was always going to play, though he acknowledged after the defeat on Monday night that in the moments before tip-off, “I really couldn’t even jump.”
No matter. The UNC training staff, Bacot said, “did a great job preparing me for this moment.” Though Bacot’s effectiveness was mixed, largely due to his limited mobility and the ways small and large his injured ankle affected his game, his effort was not. His 38 minutes were not particularly graceful, no, but they were the kind of minutes befitting a player with one good foot.
Few things came easily for Bacot during those 38 minutes and, not coincidentally, few things came easily for Kansas on the interior, too, with Bacot providing muscle and grit and fortitude inside. His were a particularly gritty 38 minutes, and raw, and no moment among them better personified their representative toughness than what transpired with a little less than a minute remaining.
It was but a one-point game then, Kansas with a 70-69 lead, and Bacot found himself with the ball and an opportunity to drive to the basket. He started to, when his right foot rolled underneath him, causing Bacot to lose his balance and sending him to the floor while he lost possession. A replay suggested Bacot might have lost his footing due to a loose piece of flooring at the Superdome.
For a moment, it appeared that Bacot might be unable to rise from the court after Kansas took possession and advanced the ball past halfcourt. Suddenly, though, there was Bacot, hopping on one leg toward the other end of the court. It brought to mind the image of a runner who suffers an injury mid-race and, pushed only by determination and the will to not give in, musters something within to cross the finish line.
After he crossed halfcourt, an official’s whistle brought momentary relief. With help, Bacot made his way back to the bench. His night was over. Moments later, David McCormack, the Kansas senior who at 6-foot-10 and 250 pounds provided Bacot a weighty challenge on the inside, scored in the lane to give the Jayhawks a three-point lead. They were the final points of the game, and they came more easily with Bacot on the bench, unable to contest the shot.
Afterward, Bacot said he “was fine” during the game but now, in the aftermath, it was clear that he was not. He needed assistance to make the short walk from the locker room to the golf cart that gave him a ride to UNC’s postgame press conference. When it ended, he hobbled off of a makeshift stage and back to the same cart, putting all of his weight on his one good leg and the UNC staff member who provided a hand, and some stability.
Hubert Davis, the Tar Heels’ first-year head coach, considered a question about the way Bacot “gutted it out all game” but to Davis, this hadn’t been a one-game development. He’d seen this sort of thing again and again, he said, since Bacot arrived in Chapel Hill in 2019.
Since then, Bacot’s college years had been filled with difficult moments and strange circumstances. The Tar Heels finished with a losing record his freshman season, and wouldn’t have made the NCAA tournament even if it hadn’t been canceled by the pandemic. His sophomore year, Bacot and his teammates, as well as players everywhere, competed in empty gyms; UNC’s season was so frustrating, meanwhile, that it was part of what led to former coach Roy Williams’ retirement.
And then came this season, when Bacot emerged as a double-double machine — with 15 points and 15 rebounds against Kansas he became the first player ever with six double-doubles in the same NCAA tournament — and the kind of team leader the Tar Heels so desperately needed. It was no wonder, then, that Davis broadened the context when asked late Monday night about Bacot’s grit.
“I’ve seen the commitment that he has had and the desperation for him to make this team successful. You know, the first couple of years — and I told Armando this — that I just felt bad for him because he’s such a great kid and an unbelievable player. And the first two years I just didn’t think he had that Carolina experience.
“And not going to the NCAA tournament his freshman year, we had a losing record, then we lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament last year. And his decision to come to North Carolina was to be a part of the great history of this program. And I really wanted that for him.
“It’s not just his effort tonight. The effort tonight that he displayed, he’s done it all year consistently. And that’s why he’s one of the better players in the country.”
Just before he rolled his ankle in the final minute, Bacot felt confident that he was going to score — that “it would have been an easy basket,” he said. He thought he’d “made a good move.” And then, in an instant, everything changed.
The one-legged hop became a product of necessity, the only means for Bacot to move.
“But I really struggled,” he said. “I really couldn’t put any weight down on my right leg. And I don’t know. Right then and there I probably knew I was done at that point.”
It was a sequence that personified the Tar Heels’ improbable run to the final Monday night of the season. It was the kind of run nobody saw coming back in mid-January, when UNC lost consecutive road games by 28, at Miami, and 22, at Wake Forest. The Tar Heels lost at home by 20 against Duke in early February, but the margin felt wider, and then came an embarrassing home defeat against Pittsburgh on Feb. 16 that called into question UNC’s NCAA tournament hopes.
Little by little, though, the Tar Heels began putting it together, and then proved what might be possible during their victory at Duke to end the regular season — a win that spoiled Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. And then came one of the most memorable NCAA tournament runs in school history, especially among teams that were not considered favorites to compete for a national championship or reach the Final Four.
“We made it this far for a reason,” R.J. Davis, the sophomore guard, said late Monday night. “This team was special.”
Moments later he was walking out of the interview room while Bacot slowly made his way out, too, with some assistance. When Bacot emerged from the Tar Heels’ locker room for the final time about 10 minutes later, he wore a large boot on the lower part of his right leg. He and most of his teammates rode on the back of carts to the exit on the other side of the Superdome.
To get to their bus, UNC’s players and coaches had to pass the Kansas locker room, where the celebration was still ongoing outside in the hall.
The Tar Heels walked past the Jayhawks cheerleaders in their national championship hats; past a few lingering players with pieces of the net hanging off of their hats. The Final Four signs and logos still lined the walls in the depths of the Superdome but already it was over, a memory. Finally, Hubert Davis and his players made their way out of the building.
Davis stepped onto the bus and sat in the front seat, looking ahead. He’d guided UNC, an eight seed, to the national championship game in his first year on the job. Bacot, meanwhile, sat across the aisle in the other front seat.
The bus pulled away at 11:50. The Tar Heels had come one missed final shot away from forcing overtime in the national championship game. Now it was time to heal, in more ways than one.
