UNC seniors Brice Johnson and Marcus Paige were both honored on Tuesday evening during the men’s basketball team end-of-year awards ceremony.

Johnson won the Dean Smith Most Valuable Player award after the forward put together one of the best seasons in UNC history. Meanwhile, guard Marcus Paige won the Defensive Player of the Year award; this marked the first time that one player won that award four times over the course of their career.

UNC was gathering to celebrate a season that saw the Tar Heels enter the year as the preseason No. 1 team in the country and eventually make a run to the national title game. Carolina had some unexpected challenges, including Paige missing the first portion of the season with a broken right hand and a shooting slump that rendered the senior lefty’s jump shot nearly unrecognizable.

Even through the shooting woes, it was clear Paige was still the leader of the team and his shooting as the season drew to a close was what both Paige and UNC fans had come to expect of him. That culminated in Paige hitting an acrobatic-double-pump three pointer to tie the national championship game against Villanova with less five seconds left in regulation. We don’t have to remind you what happened next.

Paige, from Marion, Iowa, was also the first player in UNC history to be named a permanent team captain in three seasons at Carolina. Paige also won the Tyler Zeller Award given to the team’s top scholar-athlete and the Marvin Williams Carolina Way Award for “playing hard, unselfishly and putting the team first,” on Tuesday.

Johnson, from Orangeburg, South Carolina, made a huge jump between his junior and senior seasons, becoming one of the most dominant big men in college basketball and thrusting himself into the discussion of being a lottery pick in the upcoming NBA Draft. Johnson led UNC with 17 points and 10.4 rebounds per game and led the entire Atlantic Coast Conference by shooting 61.4 percent from the field. Johnson also amassed 23 double-doubles on the season on his way to becoming a consensus first-team All-American.

Johnson, Paige and Joel James are leaving the program after exhausting their eligibility. Two other members of the team that went to the national title game – Justin Jackson and Kennedy Meeks – have entered the NBA Draft but have not hired an agent, leaving open the possibility of a return to Carolina.

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