North Carolina suffered one of many worst losses within the historical past of its soccer program on Saturday when the James Madison Dukes walked into Chapel Hill’s Kenan Memorial Stadium and trounced the Tar Heels 70-50.
Sure, that’s a soccer rating, not a basketball one. And what’s extra is that UNC wrote JMU a six-figure paycheck for the sport.
It was a record-setting beatdown, because the Dukes’ 70 factors matched essentially the most ever allowed by the Tar Heels in a recreation. In accordance to the Related Press, followers booed the Tar Heels as they walked off the sphere at halftime.
What the AP story – or every other dispatch from every other reporter overlaying the sport – didn’t comprise was a remark from any UNC participant. That’s as a result of North Carolina refused to let the assembled media discuss to gamers after this dwelling loss.
embarrassing, dangerous search for UNC https://t.co/EKWhK2NeKU
— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) September 21, 2024
The rationale for North Carolina doing this may be considered in just a few alternative ways. One may argue that, maybe, UNC head coach Mack Brown was both one, making an attempt to defend his gamers from criticism and take sole duty for the loss, or two, ship a message to his gamers that they didn’t earn the proper to speak to the media after the sport. These are each hypothetical assumptions, as a result of reporters have been by no means given a selected cause why gamers weren’t made accessible aside from: “Coach Mack Brown’s feedback will function the one postgame remarks for the Tar Heels as we speak.”
To Brown’s credit score, he did take duty for the beautiful and ugly defeat:
“It may well solely come again to 1 individual and that’s me. I’ve employed all people on this employees and signed each participant on this workforce. I’m at fault 100%. I bought large shoulders, and I’m embarrassed for our complete program that we’d put a product like that on the sphere.”
Kudos to Brown for shouldering the blame like that.
However right here’s the opposite a part of not permitting gamers at a big-time faculty soccer program like UNC to speak to innocent native reporters after they lose at dwelling to a Group of 5 opponent: What number of instances have we heard faculty coaches discuss how they’re getting ready their “student-athletes” for the actual world and life after the video games? If it’s a operate of faculty coaches and directors to arrange younger individuals for actual jobs and actual issues, then what’s the profit of protecting them from answering questions for 5 or 10 minutes after a soccer recreation? If higher-ups don’t imagine that gamers can deal with that, then haven’t they failed at their jobs?
So, no, we didn’t get to listen to from Omarion Hampton about scoring three touchdowns. We didn’t hear from Jacolby Chriswell about throwing for 475 yards. And UNC defenders weren’t given the chance to take any form of accountability.
What would’ve been a superb concession is that if, as an alternative of gamers, UNC put defensive coordinator Geoff Collins on the rostrum as an alternative — however that didn’t occur both.
The soccer workforce regarded dangerous on the sphere. This made it look worse.
It was a day in Chapel Hill the place everybody questioned about when basketball season began.
