UNC’s Armando Bacot, RJ Davis savor last NCAA Tournament run — they may be last of a kind

They first came to know each other before the start of the 2020-21 college basketball season, the one that began during a raging pandemic and played out in front of mostly empty arenas; ones with cardboard cutouts serving as spectators. It was a heck of a time to form new friendships and bonds and, maybe, that’s how Armando Bacot and RJ Davis first became close.

Davis was the newcomer then, a freshman point guard with a scorer’s reputation; a player with some brashness and flair befitting his New York City roots. Bacot, meanwhile, was a rising sophomore center for North Carolina, already earning the reputation as something of a jokester or prankster among his teammates.

What were their first impressions of each other, almost four years ago now?

Bacot and Davis both pondered the question here on Friday, before the Tar Heels’ game against Michigan State on Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. As he reflected, Davis began to smile. For his first read on Bacot, he said, was “that he’s a goofball and a troll. That was my first impression.

“But that also he was hilarious, and like, real funny.”

Bacot, for one, kept it a bit sentimental. Of the young Davis, Bacot said he remembered receiving an early scouting report from Cole Anthony, the point guard who was a part of Bacot’s incoming recruiting class at UNC. Anthony, also from New York, told Bacot about this kid he knew from back home — “always gassing RJ up,” as Bacot described it, and predicting big things for him.

“So Cole was right,” Bacot said on Friday. “And from the first day (Davis) got here, I knew he would be good. I knew he’d be a great college player, because he could just score at such a high level.”

Bacot and Davis have grown especially close. They lived together for a year, in an apartment they shared with former UNC guard Anthony Harris. They’ve played 135 games together — every single one at UNC over the past four seasons, except for the one Bacot missed last season against Virginia Tech. And now their ride is ending, sooner or later.

Earlier this week, Bacot spoke of a longing for him and Davis to “go out the right way.” They’ve often talked about it, he said. They hope their time as college teammates will end in Phoenix in early April, at the Final Four, but the NCAA Tournament has a way of providing both a sense of hope and one of foreboding. The end could come at any moment.

For a team. For a player’s college career.

It could come Saturday against Michigan State. Or next week in Los Angeles.

Whenever and however it arrives, either with a national championship celebration or a defeat that would undoubtedly be crushing in its finality, chances are strong that duos like Bacot and Davis become more rare, if they persist at all. College basketball is already a transient game, with players coming and going from year to year. There’s already the lure of the transfer portal and the prospect, for many, of receiving a more lucrative name, image and likeness deal somewhere else.

The sport is already a revolving door. Rare is it anymore for a player to stay at one school for four years. UNC has had two, with Bacot actually in his fifth season. After some thought, he agreed Friday that he and Davis likely represented the last of a kind — the four (or five) year player who stays in one place, and resists the urge or the temptation to move on.

“Now you see a lot of guys where if their situation isn’t working out for them and they don’t like what’s going on, you can just go and leave,” Bacot said, and then there are some, even if they are happy, “getting poached by different teams for money and stuff like that.”

Asked if any schools had come after him over the years, despite his strong and public allegiance to UNC, Bacot didn’t exactly answer. Yet he didn’t exactly not answer, either. He simply smiled and shook his head and offered a “no comment.”

He arrived at UNC as part of a recruiting class that included Anthony, Harris, and Jeremiah Francis. Anthony is now in his fourth NBA season, and on his second pro contract. Harris and Francis, meanwhile, both transferred out of UNC and have been gone for years.

Davis’ incoming recruiting class, in hindsight, speaks even more to the transience of college basketball. He arrived at UNC in the same class as Caleb Love, who’s now at Arizona, and Walker Kessler, who transferred to Auburn before pursuing a career in the NBA.

Other members of that class included Day’ron Sharpe, who pursued a pro career. And Puff Johnson, who transferred to Penn State. And Kerwin Walton, who wound up at Texas Tech, where he and his team suffered a defeat against N.C. State on Thursday night in the NCAA Tournament.

Their teammates have changed. Their head coach changed, in 2021, when Roy Williams retired and Hubert Davis succeeded him. College basketball has changed, with the rise of NIL and the transfer portal. Everything has changed, and continues to change, and through it all Bacot and Davis have been constants. They’ve always been there. And still are, at least for a little while longer.

The two have become linked together, in a way that longtime teammates often are, both during their college years and after. UNC has had its fair share of those kinds of duos that were forged over three of four years: Marcus Paige and Brice Johnson; Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough; Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter, and on and on.

And, now, Bacot and Davis.

“For me to share this last year with him, I mean I can’t really put it into words,” Davis said. “Because it just seemed like it happened in a blur. But I’m just so fortunate and grateful for it.”

They have both entered March, and their final NCAA Tournament together (Davis could come back for another year) with a keen awareness of how what transpires in the coming days will shape their legacies, and how they’re remembered. Bacot already has set school records for rebounds and double-doubles, and he has played more games than anyone in ACC history.

Davis, meanwhile, earned ACC Player of the Year honors and is a consensus All-American. His No. 2 jersey will be honored in the Smith Center rafters. They both have had a sense of longing, though, that has been impossible to shake. So much of this, their final year together, has been about atoning for what happened last season.

They’ve set records and won individual honors and been a part of too many highlights to count. But to be a part of this moment, now, is why they came back. To be a part of Saturday, and UNC’s game against Michigan State. To be a part of what comes after, if the Tar Heels advance. To lead the charge toward another Final Four, together. And so begins their final ride, however long it might last.