A 9-point halftime lead ballooned into a 101-69 blowout win over Northwood Temple Academy for the North Carolina junior varsity team basketball team on Thursday. But when the buzzer sounded, the score had little to do with the embraces and smiles shared between the players, their families and their friends.
With a two-year playing limit generally applied to JV players, it was the finality of the last game of the season that struck the players and their supporters.
“Some of them will go to varsity, some of them will not play basketball ever again, some of them are eligible to come back and play JV next year,” head coach Hubert Davis said. “It’s a little bit different than senior night.”
Junior Kane Ma is one of the lucky few who may not be done. Ma has starred for the team, and is expected to have a chance to join the varsity team for his senior year. Nonetheless, Ma reflected on what made his experience unforgettable.
“There's not a lot of paparazzi or fandom and all the extra stuff,” Ma said. “But it’s really cool that we come here and we are just all together playing basketball. It’s like a brotherhood.”
Fellow junior Lucas Bouknight ensured his last time on the floor was one to remember, leading the team with 20 points on six 3-pointers.
“This is the last official basketball game I'll probably ever play,” Bouknight said. “I think going into it, the confidence of, ‘I've been doing this, this is my 10th year of basketball.’ I told myself ‘just shoot your shot.’”
Being a part of the JV team is more than just an extracurricular for the players. It is an opportunity to follow their dream, sometimes in more ways than one.
“I think most of us probably could have gone and played at some D-III school or something like that but all of us chose the academic route and wanted to go to Carolina,” Bouknight said. “Now, I get to go to my dream school of Carolina and also play in the Dean Dome, wearing Carolina blue.”
