UNC is set up to silence all the haters next season

With several of their stars returning, UNC is primed to make an epic comeback next year. Can the Tar Heels find their stride in the 2023-2024 season?

March Madness wouldn’t be March Madness without a healthy dose of insanity, and that’s exactly what happened last night. After the remaining two No. 1 seeds, Alabama and Houston, were knocked out, the Elite Eight bracket is looking pretty chaotic this year. San Diego State? Miami? Florida Atlantic? All competing for the national championship? How did we get here?

The blue bloods have fallen. The top seeds have fallen. This year is the year of the underdog, and it’s also the year of rebuilding for teams that have fallen far off their pedestal — we’re looking at you, UNC.

North Carolina was ranked first overall this past preseason and ended up missing the NCAA Tournament altogether in part due to poor 3-point shooting and an overall lack of unity and cohesion.

News of UNC’s star players coming back in 2023 will buoy fans’ hopes, but one needs only to point at last year’s Tar Heels squad, which also retained the same players from the program’s 2022 Final Four run, and wonder whether North Carolina is truly better off for it.

Assuming the team continues to work on its chemistry and learns from last season’s mistakes, keeping those core pieces could make the Tar Heels a truly unstoppable force.

Big man Armando Bacot is using his final year of eligibility to enjoy one last dance at UNC. Point guard and the team’s second leading scorer R.J. Davis is also coming back, as is the talented freshman Jalen Washington, who could play an instrumental role in the team’s success next year.

UNC will benefit from the returning trio of Bacot, Davis, and Jalen Washington

Washington played fewer minutes per game than his fellow freshmen teammates but was able to make a crater-sized impact when he stepped onto the court. He finished with 2.2 points and 1.4 rebounds per game and proved his worth when Bacot and Pete Nance missed a brief amount of time due to injuries.

The freshman big man recorded two impressive games against Virginia and Louisville; other than those performances, he only played eight minutes or so every game, serving as a rotational piece meant to ease Bacot’s workload and get him out of foul trouble.

In his sophomore campaign and with Bacot leaving after the 2023 season, Washington should take on a more prominent role in Carolina’s offense as he works on his post game and improves his already decent 45.7 field shooting percentage.

It’s not clear how head coach Hubert Davis will use Washington next year — Washington could either start alongside Bacot to give the Tar Heels a bigger-bodied starting lineup or be Bacot’s go-to backup.

Having Washington, Bacot, and Davis back would, on paper, make it seem like UNC is set up for a much more successful 2023-2024 campaign, and keeping that trio also clarifies the program’s needs in the portal. Keep an eye on the Tar Heels’ guards — Seth Trimble, D’Marco Dunn, and Caleb Love — to see if they will announce their returns as well.