GREENSBORO, N.C. — As Hubert Davis turned the corner towards his locker room, his wife Leslie trailing close behind, North Carolina’s head coach wore a stoic stare. No tears, even for an emotional man on a trying evening. Just a brisk beeline away from the postgame dais, a curt left turn into a closet-sized cove. A beige metal door slammed shut.
Reprieve, at long last, at 9:37 p.m. on a Thursday.
And the end, for all intents and purposes, of North Carolina’s nightmarish season.
Mercifully. Finally.
This season — the one so filled with promise back in October, the one that engendered preseason hype, up to and including the No. 1 ranking, and the requisite hope that came along with it — has instead been a miserable five-month slog. A chore. And that goes for everyone even tangentially tied to this program this season: Davis, who has reiterated his frustrations in seemingly every public appearance; his players, who have been worn down by the weight of expectations; even fans, those same ones so ecstatic in New Orleans last April.
How has it been less than a year since then? It easily feels like a decade.
“The story of this year,” Armando Bacot said after UNC’s 68-59 loss to Virginia in the ACC tournament, “was talking about last year.”
In that respect, perhaps, North…
