A fractured dream: UNC loses to Kansas 80-67

ST. LOUIS – Harrison Barnes just wasn’t prepared to face the world quite yet. So he didn’t.

The sophomore forward sat motionless in the Tar Heels’ locker room for 17 minutes, one hand clutching a Carolina blue towel draped over his drooping head.

The world on the other side of that towel continued to spin around Barnes. His choked-up teammates surrounding him answered a barrage of questions from reporters following the team’s 80-67 Elite Eight loss to Kansas.

But Barnes didn’t see any of it. He wasn’t ready to believe it was all over.

“(I was feeling) just disbelief,” Barnes said, describing the thoughts running through his finally lifted head. “I missed a lot of shots I usually make. Big time players come through in big time games. And it just wasn’t there.”

In UNC’s overtime win against 13-seeded Ohio on Friday, Barnes finished 2-for-15 in regulation. And for most of the first half against Kansas, he was nowhere to be found offensively.

But with 3:22 to go in the half, UNC down by seven, Barnes finished a you-can’t-stop-me drive to the basket with a slam dunk for his first points of the game.

Barnes had 13 points against the Jayhawks, eight of which came in the first half.

But with just less than four minutes to play, Barnes had the chance to tie the score at 68 by sinking two free throws. He made just one. And it was the last point the Tar Heels would score this season.

To many, UNC’s hopes of a sixth NCAA title seemed like an impossible dream once starting point guard Kendall Marshall went down with a wrist injury in UNC’s third-round NCAA tournament win against Creighton.

“You try not to think about that,” forward James Michael McAdoo said. “But of course you’re going to think about it because we’re all human beings. I just got that picture of Kendall falling in my head, just over and over.”

Freshman Stilman White replaced Marshall in the lineup for the second straight game Sunday. And while the effects of Marshall’s absence weren’t especially evident in the first half — during which UNC shot almost 64 percent from the floor — the Tar Heels began to look more and more lost without their vocal leader on the court in the game’s waning minutes.

After Barnes’ missed free throw, guard Reggie Bullock turned the ball over and Kansas turned the opportunity into a 12-0 run to end the game.

Kansas continued to distance itself as the seconds ticked off. But Barnes, refusing to count UNC out while there was time still left on the clock, took a series of desperation jumpers.
Each one fell just a little short.

After the game, Barnes’ head still buried in the towel, Bullock bent down and whispered something in the grieving forward’s ear.
“I just told him that he was good, he played hard, that it wasn’t his fault, it was nobody’s fault,” Bullock said. “I was basically just telling him to keep his head up.”

But for Barnes — who had grown accustomed to resting a season full of expectations on his shoulders — his head was still just a little too heavy to lift.

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.