Michael Koh's Top 5 and Bottom 5 Moments of the 2022-23 UNC Sports Season

With the 2022-23 UNC sports season now in the books, it’s time to both look ahead to 2023-24 and look back on the year that was. Tar Heel teams across nearly 30 sports competed in various NCAA championships, with levels of success ranging from the top of the mountain to the depths of despair. I’m taking a look back at the Top 5 and Bottom 5 moments of the season, starting with the worst of the worst.

5) UNC Men’s Soccer is Eliminated by High Point

Image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jerome M. Ibrahim

Yes, you read that right. The UNC men’s soccer team had a rather mediocre regular season in 2022, finishing 8-5-5 and 2-2-4 in conference play after a second-round exit in the ACC Tournament. The season included such embarrassments as a 3-0 loss on the road at Elon and a 1-1 draw in an exhibition against Mount Olive. Still, the Tar Heels earned a somewhat surprising at-large berth into the NCAA Tournament, with an opening match against High Point at Dorrance Field. Easy, right?

Not so much. The Panthers held the Carolina attack in check and won going away with a pair of second-half goals. UNC was held scoreless for the second consecutive match and left with a season-ending result that was truly deserved. The Tar Heels have won two national titles, but those days seemed very far away as the clock hit 90 minutes.

4) Women’s Basketball’s Valiant Comeback Comes Up Short

Image via Associated Press/Michael Conroy

The Tar Heels’ final game of 2022-23 was truly a microcosm of the team’s season at large. Carolina fought tooth-and-nail against host Ohio State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, but some bad breaks proved too much to overcome. UNC trailed in the fourth quarter when star guard Deja Kelly went down with a lower-body injury so severe she had to be helped off the court. But after Kelly exited, Carolina mounted an impressive comeback. The Tar Heels completely erased the 12-point Buckeye lead and even grabbed a one-point advantage with two minutes to go. By that time, Kelly had miraculously re-entered the game and appeared ready to lead her team to an upset.

Ohio State eventually regained its composure and the lead, and a controversial moving screen call against Carolina’s Teonni Key ended a key offensive possession late. A Kelly jumper tied the game with nine seconds remaining, but the Buckeyes’ Jacy Sheldon delivered the knockout blow with 1.8 to go. UNC’s desperation play ended when Kennedy Todd-Williams’ pass to Alyssa Ustby met the backboard before Ustby’s hands. It proved to be an unfortunate end to Todd-Williams’ Carolina career, as the junior from Jacksonville, N.C. transferred to Ole Miss in the offseason.

3) Football Goes Out With a Whimper

Image via Associated Press/Jacob Kupferman

Not much was expected of the Tar Heels entering the 2022 season. Carolina was unranked and had uncertainty at quarterback following the departure of Sam Howell. But that all changed when Drake Maye burst onto the scene. Maye and the Tar Heels exploded out of the gate with gaudy offensive numbers, none more so than a 63-61 final at App State. Carolina made its way into the national polls and maxed out at 9-1 following a win at Wake Forest which clinched the second Coastal Division title in program history. Two winnable home games against Georgia Tech and NC State were next on the schedule, and then a date with Clemson in the ACC Championship. Then, who knows? College Football Playoff?

What happened next revealed those dreams to be fool’s gold. The Tar Heels dropped a stunner to the Yellow Jackets, 21-17 (blowing a 17-0 lead in the process), then lost in double-overtime to the Wolfpack. The championship against Clemson was a 39-10 laugher which turned on a nearly 100-yard pick six thrown by Maye as Carolina was approaching the end zone. And finally, UNC lost its bowl game by a single point on a last-minute touchdown by the Oregon Ducks. 9-1 had turned to 9-5 in a flash, with three of the four consecutive losses decided by a combined eight points.

2) Men’s Basketball Makes History — In The Worst Way

Image via Todd Melet

The UNC men’s basketball team’s vision for the 2022-23 season was clear from the outset: championship or bust. The Tar Heels returned four of five starters from the previous season’s national runner-up squad, added coveted transfer Pete Nance from Northwestern to the fold and were voted preseason No. 1. Carolina was still riding the highs of that memorable run through the tournament, but head coach Hubert Davis repeatedly insisted those days were over. It was a new year.

But after the ball was tipped, the Tar Heels seemed off. Closer-than-expected wins against the likes of UNC-Wilmington and Gardner-Webb were initially shrugged off as early-season jitters, but they proved to be a sign of things to come. Carolina made a disastrous trip out west to the PK85 tournament in Portland and came away with close losses to Iowa State and eventual No. 1 Alabama (the latter after four overtimes). Those poor performances led to an unprecedented drop from No. 1 to out of the polls entirely, the fastest ever for a preseason No. 1.

The rest of the season saw UNC come close to several memorable wins (including twice against Duke) but always fall a few plays short of victory. Those failures down the stretch cost the Tar Heels, as they ended up as one of the infamous “First Four Out” of the NCAA Tournament. Carolina now stands alone as the only preseason No. 1 since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams to miss the field that season. UNC then declined an NIT berth and entered an offseason of changes, one which saw seven players — including 2022 hero Caleb Love — transfer out of the program.

1) Women’s Soccer Falls 16 Seconds Short of a Title

Image via UNC women’s soccer on Twitter

Carolina and UCLA played one of the most memorable matches in NCAA women’s soccer history in the 2022 national championship, but for Tar Heel fans it’s memorable in all the wrong ways. UNC had one hand on its 23rd national championship trophy after taking a 2-0 lead on the Bruins with 10 minutes to go. Carolina’s Avery Patterson, quickly establishing herself as one of the top talents in the nation, was responsible for both goals.

UCLA quickly sliced that deficit in half, but the score remained 2-1 into the final minute. As the Bruins desperately hammered away at the Carolina defense, the partisan Tar Heel crowd at the WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary grew ever more frenzied. UCLA won a corner kick with less than 30 seconds to go and crowded into the box. As the corner sailed toward the net, UNC keeper Emmie Allen attempted to jump and punch it away. But Allen found her path blocked by scores of Bruins, and she was knocked into the net almost at the same time as the ball was. No foul was called on UCLA and the goal stood, the clock frozen at 16 seconds.

The dazed Tar Heels never stood a chance in extra time, with UCLA dominating possession and eventually scoring the winning goal. Carolina is still far and away the national leader in women’s soccer championships, but hasn’t lifted the trophy since 2012. Thanks to late drama in Cary, that wait will go on at least another offseason.

What a downer, huh?

But it proves how high expectations are around Chapel Hill. A 9-5 football season and a conference championship appearance is — all things considered — pretty good. Appearing in the women’s soccer championship match is a dream season for about 90 percent of programs around the country.

Fortunately, there were several great moments in 2022-23 that more than offset the bad. Here are my Top 5 selections:

5) Baseball Emphatically Sweeps NC State in Chapel Hill

Image via UNC Athletic Communications/Ainsley E. Fauth

The Diamond Heels’ 2023 season is best described as up-and-down, as Carolina fell in the regional round for the second time in three seasons. But UNC’s highlight of the season is an easy one: sweeping rival NC State at Boshamer Stadium. It was the team’s first home sweep of the Wolfpack since 2006, and all but punched its NCAA Tournament ticket.

Game 1 was the only game of the weekend to be up for grabs late, as the Pack burst out of the gate with five runs in the top of the first. The Tar Heels answered with four runs in the third and kept the game close until the ninth, when NC State held an 8-7 lead. Pinch hitter Eric Grintz came through in the clutch with an RBI triple to tie the game, and head coach Scott Forbes then rolled the dice with one out, calling for a suicide squeeze bunt. The play worked to perfection, as Colby Wilkerson laid down the bunt and Carter French (pinch-running for Grintz) scampered home without a throw.

The walk-off win’s momentum carried over into the remaining two games of the series, which Carolina won by a combined score of 21-5. An unfortunate postscript to this story is that the Tar Heels went just 3-7 in their final 10 games after the NC State series, all of which came without star outfielder Vance Honeycutt. The NC State games proved to be his last in 2023, as he missed the remainder of the season with a lower-body injury.

4) Drake Maye’s Desperation Drive Beats Duke

Image via Associated Press/Ben McKeown

In a game which saw both teams appear to seize the game in the second half, Carolina and Duke fought back and forth at Wallace Wade Stadium in a critical ACC clash. The Blue Devils were looking to officially announce their return to competitive football under first-year head coach Mike Elko, and the Tar Heels hoped to put the Coastal Division in a stranglehold with a win. UNC looked to be in good position to do just that after taking a 31-21 lead in the third quarter and then stopping Duke on fourth down on the next possession. But miscues down the stretch — including a botched trick play and a missed field goal in rapid succession — let Duke back in it. The Blue Devils took advantage with two touchdowns in four minutes to take the lead.

Duke very nearly ended the game on its own terms with another late touchdown, but it was negated by a controversial chop block penalty. After the Blue Devils missed a long field goal try, the ball went back into the hands of Drake Maye and the Tar Heels with 2:09 remaining. Maye then led Carolina on a gutsy, 74-yard drive, one which saw he and star receiver Josh Downs convert a 4th-and-5 at the Duke 20-yard line. Maye then found Antoine Green in the corner of the end zone for what appeared to be the winning score with 16 seconds left, but the Blue Devil sideline contended Green was out of bounds when he caught the ball.

Wallace Wade Stadium was then held hostage for a lengthy replay review. As the replay wound back and forth on the video board, the Carolina sideline went into hysterics at the sight of the slightest sliver of grass between Green’s cleats and the white paint of the sideline. The touchdown was upheld, and UNC had the lead again at 38-35. A Will Hardy interception on Duke’s last-gasp drive sealed Carolina’s fourth consecutive win over the rivals from Durham.

3) Austin O’Connor and Aranza Vazquez Strike Gold

Image via UNC Athletic Communications

UNC wrestler Austin O’Connor and diver Aranza Vazquez are both two-time national champions. O’Connor capped off a brilliant career on the mat for the Tar Heels with the 157-pound championship, his second career title. O’Connor earned All-America status five times in his six years in Chapel Hill and is only the second wrestler in the program’s history to win multiple national championships.

Vazquez, meanwhile, captured the first and second diving championships in Carolina history on the one- and three-meter springboard. She’s one of the most decorated athletes in the program’s history, having been named an All-American as a freshman and a sophomore. Vazquez also represented her native Mexico at the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

2) Field Hockey Sees Shelton Out With Another Championship

Image via UNC Field Hockey on Twitter

The UNC field hockey team put together one of its most dominant seasons ever in 2022, bringing an undefeated record into the national championship game against Northwestern — the team which had ended Carolina’s four-peat bid a year earlier. In a highly competitive game, the Tar Heels scored first but couldn’t extend the advantage past 1-0. The Wildcats finally broke through with a goal with less than two minutes remaining.

Then Erin Matson did what Erin Matson does. Playing in her final collegiate game, the UNC superstar scored the game-winning goal with 1:18 to go, just 36 seconds after Northwestern had evened the score. It proved to be the game winner, as the Wildcats didn’t get a single shot off in the waning seconds. For Matson, it was the second national championship-winning goal of her illustrious career, one which saw the Tar Heels compile a 99-8 overall record. Matson is the only player in program history to win four national championships, the only five-time ACC Player of the Year — regardless of sport — in the league’s history and the ACC’s all-time points leader.

The championship win became even more meaningful just a few weeks later, when legendary head coach Karen Shelton announced her retirement. Shelton led the field hockey program for 42 years, won a record 10 national championships and is the winningest coach in NCAA field hockey history. The job remained vacant until late January, when Carolina announced a surprising hire: Matson herself. Matson was only 22 years old at the time of the announcement, making her younger than Shelton (23) when she became the UNC head coach.

1) Women’s Tennis Finally Wins it All

Image via NCAA on Twitter

For years, the only knock against head coach Brian Kalbas’ elite UNC women’s tennis team had been its inability to win an NCAA team championship. The program had won everything else under Kalbas’ watch: NCAA singles and doubles titles, seven ITA indoor national championships and even more ACC championships. But the NCAA team title, played on outdoor courts, had always eluded the Tar Heels.

As of 2023, that curse has been lifted. Carolina blazed through the NCAA Tournament and defeated several elite programs along the way, including two-time defending champion Texas in the quarterfinals and six-time champion Georgia in the semifinals (UNC had beaten Georgia twice already on the season — including in the ITA championship match). The national championship would see Carolina face an even more familiar opponent: NC State. The Wolfpack had already beaten the Tar Heels once, thrashing them in the ACC championship less than a month earlier and giving Carolina its first and only loss of the season. It would be no cakewalk.

In a grueling affair made no easier by steamy conditions in Orlando, UNC slugged past the Wolfpack in doubles and gutted out several long singles matches. Elizabeth Scotty provided a turning point when she fought off three set points in a first-set tiebreaker, then won that tiebreaker to earn a critical 7-6 win. Scotty then won the second set in much easier fashion, putting Carolina on the brink of a title. Carson Tanguilig provided the championship moment by winning the decisive third set in her singles match, giving the Tar Heels a closer-than-the-final-score 4-1 win.

And the Tar Heels weren’t done. In the following week’s doubles tournament, two Carolina pairs advanced to the title match: Fiona Crawley and Tanguilig faced off with Scotty and Reese Brantmeier, with Crawley and Tanguilig winning the crown. Crawley, who won multiple team and individual tournament championships during the 2022-23 season, has since been nominated for the Honda Sport Award in women’s tennis.

Featured image via ITA on Twitter

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