Discussing Carolina athletics’ stretch of pain

Dec 7, 2022 - 2:00 PM

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It goes without saying that Carolina athletics have been through the wringer over the last couple of weeks, but I don’t know that any of us were expecting this level of pain. After a promising start to the football season, the team started sliding down into the pit of despair, which eventually led to their loss to Clemson in the ACC Championship Game. The men’s basketball team started the season number one, and now they aren’t even ranked in the AP Top 25 anymore. Then there is the women’s soccer team, who just lost a painful 28-3 type game to UCLA for the national championship. Any fan that hasn’t felt the pain at this point, to put it bluntly, has no soul.

Fellow podcast co-host Julius Manuel asked an interesting question during this week’s episode of What in Tar Nation: knowing what we know now about how the 2022-23 athletic season has turned out, would we give the win over Duke in the Final Four back in order to restore order to the universe? For me personally, the answer is a hard no. The last few weeks have been excruciating, but here’s the thing: UNC is still winning, they’re just having a few bad days in the office. There are a lot of programs that aren’t able to point to two national championships won this calendar year, which is something the Tar Heels can claim. They were literally seconds away from winning a third one, and if it weren’t for BS referees who ignored the goalie getting knocked down, we’d be singing a completely different tune.

I don’t know what’s going on with football or basketball other than there are some changes needed for both teams, though the degree of changes varies between the two programs. For football, I think their biggest problem right now is the staff, and it needs to be addressed immediately. For basketball, I think Hubert Davis needs to shorten his leash with his backcourt, and really work on tightening things up before this weekend’s game against Georgia Tech. It may be too late for football for the 2022 season — there’s no way they will hire someone before the Holiday Bowl is played — but I’m hopefully that Hubert Davis will right the ship.

In order to get our full thoughts on all of the pain of the last couple of weeks, check out our latest episode of the What in Tar Nation podcast on the Tar Heel Blog podcast channel. Here is how you can listen:

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tar-heel-blog-podcast-for-north-carolina-tar-heels-fans/id1453446283

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/35RZ2eE5DnZBCVOqtkmmm9

Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/tar-heel-blogs-for-unc-tar-heels-fans

And hey, if you do not use any of those services, feel free to listen directly from this article by using the Megaphone window below.

Keep calm, and Go Heels!