The Signs Were There for a UNC Men's Basketball Collapse. Against VCU, It Finally Happened.

UNC’s 2025-26 season came crashing down around it Thursday night in Greenville, as the Tar Heels blew a 19-point lead in the second half in an 82-78 overtime loss to No. 11 seed VCU. The historical implications of the loss, and what it might mean for head coach Hubert Davis’ future, are staggering:

It’s the second consecutive loss in the tournament’s Round of 64 for UNC, something which has never happened before.
It’s just the fourth overall loss for the program in the Round of 64, though three of those have come in the last six seasons.
UNC has not reached the tournament’s Round of 32 in three of the past four seasons — including one year where the Tar Heels missed the field entirely.

Several factors contributed to Carolina’s shocking collapse, many of which had been plainly evident throughout the season and Davis’ five years in charge of the program.

The most glaring issue, particularly in light of how Thursday’s game ended, was UNC’s mediocrity at the foul line. Carolina finished just 12-20 on free throws, including three critical misses from Seth Trimble and Henri Veesaar in the overtime period. Veesaar went to the line with less than 10 seconds left and UNC trailing 80-78, needing to make both to keep the Tar Heels alive. He missed the first, then intentionally missed the second in an attempt to get the rebound.

Carolina has struggled at the line all season, with its 68.1 free throw percentage ranking 15th out of 18 teams in the ACC and in the 300s among all Division 1 schools. Thursday night, that glaring flaw ended UNC’s season.

“I didn’t execute when it mattered the most. Gotta work on free throws,” Veesaar said with a bitter laugh Thursday night. “Gotta work on executing. Just being man enough to do it in the moment.”

The free throw issue goes hand-in-hand with another disturbing trend which had revealed itself throughout the year, and which came home to roost in Greenville: the Tar Heels’ tendency to let big leads slip away. Carolina did so and survived several times this season: against Louisville, UNC led by 16 and only won by three. Against Syracuse, it led by 32 and only won by 10. At Stanford, Carolina held a lead for nearly the entire game before the Cardinal came roaring back to steal a win in the final minutes.

A similar script played out at the worst possible time against VCU, as Carolina missed its final nine shots of the game while the Rams shot better than 60 percent in the second half.

“I felt like we had the game in the bag. I felt like we could’ve made a deep run in this tournament,” said Jarin Stevenson. “But we let it slip away.”

Some of those offensive woes could be connected with UNC’s unusually tight substitution pattern in the second half. Only six Tar Heels played in the period: the five starters, plus Jonathan Powell off the bench. Zayden High and Kyan Evans had appeared in the first half and played key minutes in helping UNC to establish a lead, but Evans did not play at all in the second half or overtime. High only re-entered in the final seconds of the extra session as an emergency rebounder.

It was a surprising departure from the season-long trend for Davis, who had leaned on his bench this season more than in years past. The Tar Heels’ lack of depth was a main contributing factor in their blown lead against Kansas in the 2022 national championship, when Armando Bacot twisted his ankle late in the game. Thursday’s loss was an eerie callback to that night in New Orleans.

Indeed, both of those losses were defined by injuries: Bacot’s ankle against Kansas, and Caleb Wilson’s previously fractured thumb against VCU. Carolina dropped its final three games of the season after learning of Wilson’s second, season-ending injury.

“You get tired during the game, simple as that,” said Trimble, who attended the Kansas game as a fan. “You get tired, but we’ve been in that position many, many times this year. So it wasn’t anything at first.”

For his part, Davis said he did not sense that his team was fatigued late in the game. When asked about why he tightened his substitutions, the head coach simply said, “Because that was my decision.”

Davis has long been protective of his players and his tactical decisions, but that answer was curt even by his standards. It’s impossible to know exactly what Davis was thinking as his season collapsed around him, and given his private nature, we may never know the true answer to that question. Whatever that answer is, the facts bear this harsh reality out: much of Thursday night’s collapse can be attributed to Davis’ decision-making in the second half. His overworked players clearly tired as VCU furiously chipped away at the lead, which led to ragged offensive possessions, turnovers, missed shots and free throws.

Late-game execution has long been an issue for the Tar Heels under Davis’ leadership. Many UNC fans can still see Jae’Lyn Withers taking an ill-advised three-pointer early in the shot clock in the 2024 Sweet 16, which gave underdog Alabama the opening it needed to spring the upset over No. 1 Carolina. The next season, the Tar Heels had golden opportunities to win games against Michigan State and Florida, both of which ended up being high seeds in the NCAA Tournament. Each game ended in a loss.

In Davis’ five seasons, Carolina is just 26-43 in “Quad 1” games, as defined by the NCAA’s NET metric. That UNC is well below .500 against the best of the best in college basketball is more than enough reason for concern. And it’s one of a number of reasons the calls for change have grown louder. And after Thursday’s historically bad loss, in which a number of underlying issues were laid bare for the world to see, those calls will only get louder.

Featured image via Associated Press/Brynn Anderson

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The Signs Were There for a UNC Men’s Basketball Collapse. Against VCU, It Finally Happened.

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