How to adjust to the end of basketball season

Basketball began to consume our lives at the tipoff of the exhibition game on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016 and stopped consuming our lives after the final buzzer of the National Championship on Monday, April 3, 2017. 

Five months of cheering, five months of entering the lottery and hoping to get that phase one ticket, five months of watching and experiencing one heck of a basketball season. 

But now, it’s over.

The basketball blues are a real thing.

For some students, this was the last basketball season they’ll experience as a UNC student. For some, it was their first basketball experience at UNC, and what a memorable one it was.

Junior Alexander Magee isn’t sure how he feels about basketball season ending just yet. 

“I guess how I feel after the basketball season ends depends on how the game goes,” Magee said. “Either way, I’m going to have a lot more free time on my hands to, I guess, study for class with finals coming up.”

Cheerleader Annika Becker was able to experience the best of both worlds of basketball. As a first-year, she only cheered for the women’s basketball team and not the men’s team, but that allowed her to attend the men’s basketball games. 

But this just means that she’s experiencing twice as much basketball withdrawal.

“Now that basketball season is over, it’s sad,” she said. “The beginning of spring semester and fall semester is all about when the next basketball game is and like who got tickets and stuff, I don’t know, it’s exciting.”

As tears stream down your face when you realize the best five months of the year are over, maybe you have to rewatch the last minute of the victory over Duke, Luke Maye’s shot to send the team to the Final Four or highlights from every game just to keep your sanity. 

Sophomore Polly Sjoberg plans to continue keeping up with UNC’s other athletic teams in order to fill the void of basketball season. 

“I’ll just transition to the next sport, baseball probably,” Sjoberg said. “I've got to find some way to keep up the UNC pride.”

But for others, it’s not that simple. Basketball cannot be substituted so quickly.

Magee can’t replace basketball with whatever comes next.

“I’m also a big fan of the lacrosse team,” Magee said. “But once basketball ends, that’s pretty much my main focus for sports here.”

Not only will the students miss watching that Tar Heels take center court at the Smith Center, but they’ll miss the game day environment around campus.

Sjoberg is hopeful that this school-spirited atmosphere will continue on through the rest of the year.

“I just think it’s such a fun atmosphere and environment on campus,” Sjoberg said. “I think there will be a little lull for a little bit while everyone catches up on homework and sleep, but I mean like everyone’s loving the atmosphere, so people are gonna want to keep that up.”

The Carolina blue jerseys, the Ceiling is the Roof T-shirts and the community on Franklin Street during game days are priceless.

“I’ll definitely miss basketball season because I like watching it. It’s something to love about your school, like how we’re so great,” Becker said. 

“Especially freshman year, like you don’t realize that you’re in the National Championship, that’s insane — no one else is in that.”

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