Shock of North Carolina’s Sweet 16 exit is going to take a long time to fade

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LOS ANGELES — His feet plunged in an NCAA cooler half full of crushed ice, eyes glued to the black carpet inside North Carolina’s locker room, Cormac Ryan tried to answer a simple and simultaneously impossible question:

What are you feeling right now?

“F—ing pissed off, first and foremost,” Ryan said. “Wanted to win that game. We all did.”

Naturally. So in moments like that — not even a half hour after UNC’s season-ending 89-87 loss to Alabama in the Sweet 16 — that’s a logical first reaction. You’re still replaying missed shots and other miscues on a nightmare-like mental loop. The gut, visceral response is frustration, that red-hot fire of having failed.

And then, in real-time, the rest sank in. How once Ryan takes off his jersey, there’s no putting it back on. Season, over. And for him? College basketball career, over. Just like that. Gone forever.

Ryan’s lip quivered. A deep exhale.

“You know, I’m sad,” he continued, much more slowly, “that this is gonna be the last time with this group. Love these guys. Love this university.”

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And it was, even despite Thursday’s result at Crypto.com Arena, a special group. No, North Carolina will not fly to Phoenix next weekend for the Final Four, but that disappointment does not (or should not, at least) cancel out this team’s other accomplishments. Winning the ACC regular-season title. Earning the program’s record 18th No. 1 seed. Producing both the player and coach of the year in the conference.

“Getting Carolina,” as RJ Davis said, “back to where it usually is.”

But those things are hard to cling to now, when a team’s lofty dreams just turned to dust. The finality of everything is what makes the NCAA Tournament the best postseason in sports — and quite possibly the most painful. Because one minute, you’re up three with 92 seconds left, an Elite Eight berth in your grasp. And the next, the buzzer blares and you’re on a redeye flight back home.

One locker to Ryan’s right, after Armando Bacot’s 169th and final college basketball contest, UNC’s storied big man tried to put that sentiment into words.

“I’m just shocked. I don’t even really know,” Bacot said. “I’m, like, blank right now. No feeling.”

Shock is also appropriate — especially after those final 92 seconds, which will haunt the Tar Heels for quite some time. They will be talked about like Kendall Marshall’s broken wrist in 2012, like Auburn’s unstoppable shooting in 2019. Like Kris Jenkins in 2016, although obviously not to that level of drama. But in that same, painful vein.

Davis had just hit the second of two free throws to put UNC up three. It was the last point of his personal 6-0 run, one that seemed redemptive after arguably his worst game of the season. For the first time in 37 games, the All-American did not make a single 3-pointer, going 0-of-9 from deep. But that 6-0 run, part of an 8-0 stretch by North Carolina, reclaimed the lead for the Tar Heels and seemed to supersede any earlier wrongs.

And then everything came undone.

It started with Mark Sears, Alabama’s All-America guard, driving for a layup to make it a one-point game. On UNC’s next offensive possession, the Crimson Tide double-teamed Davis as they had all game, and he passed out of it to forward Jae’Lyn Withers on the perimeter. Withers hitched. And then, for only the 20th time all season, a 21 percent 3-point shooter rose up and launched a trey, with Davis behind him clamoring for the ball.

Clank.

“The shot I took was a crucial shot,” Withers said. “I work on it day in and day out, but I think that with the time and score there, I could’ve gotten to the free-throw line there. I could’ve gotten to the basket.”

Instead? Alabama took that defensive rebound and whipped it down the floor to forward Grant Nelson — who scored 19 of his game-high 24 points in the second half — just in time for him to convert an and-1 layup over Withers.

Nelson made the free throw, putting Alabama up two, then spiked Davis’ last-ditch layup attempt volleyball-style on UNC’s do-or-die offensive possession. The Tar Heels didn’t get another attempt off. Shot-clock violation, with 7.7 seconds left.

Ballgame.

And while those futile final possessions will be what haunts North Carolina in the days and weeks to come, that stretch was painfully emblematic of the Tar Heels’ entire evening. Missing 15 of their first 17 shots in the second half. Failing to get Davis, who shot 4-of-20 overall, going in any discernible way. Allowing Nelson, a wiry 26.5 percent 3-point shooter, to get to his spots, over and over again, with no defensive adjustment.

It was a phenomenal coaching job by Alabama’s Nate Oats, flatly refusing to let RJ Davis beat his team single-handedly. And it was the opposite by Hubert Davis, who had plenty of fire on the sideline but few solutions.

In the coach’s postgame locker room, Davis sat with his head in his hand, blankly staring into space. He will have to sit with his result and the role he played in it.

So too will UNC’s hurting players and their stunned families sitting behind UNC’s bench. Bacot’s father, Armando Sr., did not mill around with other parents, discussing what went wrong. He just sat there, his navy North Carolina hoodie pulled over his head, silently patting away his tears with crumpled brown napkins.

That sadness will subside some in the next few days. But next weekend, when either Clemson or Alabama is playing in its first Final Four, it will hurt again. Maybe worse. Because it will become apparent the opportunity North Carolina squandered here, with as readymade a Final Four path as it could’ve hoped for.

GO DEEPER

Once again, Arizona is left to pick up the pieces

There was no Arizona awaiting in the Elite Eight. No much-discussed meeting against former UNC star Caleb Love — who, like Davis, shot 0-of-9 from 3 in his team’s loss on Thursday. There was Clemson, a team UNC whooped by 10 on the road in January and lost to by four points — despite a 17-2 start — at home amid an obvious Duke hangover. Nothing is guaranteed, clearly, but a No. 16 seed, a No. 9, a No. 4, and a No. 6? To make it to the Final Four?

You take that eight days a week.

“Our goal was to win a national championship,” Ryan said, “and we didn’t do that.”

Another deep breath. His best attempt to swallow the knot in his throat.

“That one really hurts,” he eventually whispered, “and it’ll hurt for the rest of our lives.”

(Photo: C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)