Suddenly, it’s the offseason. The team that actually made the NCAA Tournament this year, Coach Banghart’s squad, was sent home on a last-second heartbreaker by the third-seeded Ohio State yesterday, and the men’s team has been home for much longer than that. That’s the toughest part of a single elimination tournament; for every team but one, the season just ends, without any kind of falling action or catharsis. It’s clipping along until, all at once, it isn’t anymore. Now we find ourselves in a sort of holding pattern, not yet distracted fully by baseball games or spring football, drifting in the suddenly-still air of the offseason like the pollen that has begun to coat my car each morning here in Chapel Hill.
UNC Basketball: The Waiting Game
