The moments to remember from one of the best sporting years in memory in the Triangle
As far as years go, 2022 has to rank among the better ones in Triangle sports history.
There were national championships (hello, N.C. State women’s cross country, North Carolina women’s lacrosse and field hockey and N.C. Central football). We said goodbye to Coach K. And hello to Drake Maye. And a UNC-Duke Final Four game didn’t lead to armageddon, after all. The Hurricanes were good (well, maybe until the playoffs) and, for once, so was every area ACC football team.
So yes — not bad, 2022. Not bad, indeed.
Before looking ahead to 2023, here’s a look back at 10 stories to remember from the year that was:
N.C. State repeats as women’s cross country national champions
The Wolfpack went almost 40 years without winning an NCAA championship in any sport, but State has now won two in the past two years, thanks to its dominant women’s cross country program. The Wolfpack won the national championship for the second consecutive season, and Katelyn Tuohy, a junior, won the individual title and set the course record in Stillwater, Oklahoma. And also, Tuohy — who is also a national champion in the 5,000 meter — is a junior, and will be back. So, too, might Wolfpack next fall.
UNC adds two more national championships
Another year, another national championship (or two) for the Tar Heels. Dean Smith once said that UNC wasn’t a basketball school as much as a women’s soccer school — though, these days, it’s a couple of other women’s sports most often winning big. In the spring, the Tar Heels women’s lacrosse team won the national championship for the third time in the past nine years, and first since 2016.
And in the fall, UNC’s field hockey team went undefeated and won its 10th national championship. It was the only way that Erin Matson’s collegiate career could’ve ended, and she’ll leave school as perhaps the most decorated athlete in any sport in ACC history. After the season, UNC coach Karen Shelton announced her retirement after 42 years. All 10 of the Tar Heels’ field hockey national championships have come with Shelton as the head coach.
N.C. State’s women’s basketball program continues its ascent
While the Wolfpack men’s basketball program continues to flounder — it hasn’t won the ACC since 1987 — the Wolfpack women continue to show how it’s done. They won the ACC for the third consecutive year and finished with a school record 32 victories. State’s double-overtime defeat against Connecticut in the Elite Eight — in what was essentially a Wolfpack road game — was a classic, even if those teams shouldn’t have met until the Final Four (or, certainly not in Connecticut, with the Wolfpack as the higher seed). State continues to set the standard for the Triangle in women’s basketball, and it has raised local interest in the sport as a result.
A star is born: The Drake Maye edition
Through the first nine games of the college football season, UNC freshman quarterback Drake Maye played as well as anyone in the country. He appeared a near lock to be in New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist, until a late-season swoon (both for Maye, and the Tar Heels) ended those chances. The good news: He has at least one more college season left, and he’ll enter the 2023 season among the Heisman favorites. If ever UNC is to break through in football, the time is now.
A rare season of winning football in the Triangle, and beyond
College football seasons like the one we just experienced rarely come along in the Triangle, if ever. Duke, N.C. State and UNC all finished with at least eight victories. Throw in Wake Forest, and the Big Four all had winning seasons in the same year for the first time since the creation of the ACC. It wasn’t quite as good of a season as it could’ve been — N.C. State and UNC still haven’t won the ACC in more than 40 years — but it’s rare that the state’s ACC schools are all competitive at the same time.
A regular season to remember for the Carolina Hurricanes
If the Hurricanes’ second round playoff exit felt especially unfulfilling last summer, it’s because it came after perhaps the best regular season in franchise history. The Canes’ 54 victories set a franchise record (so did their 116 points) and they won their division for the sixth time. After some lean years (OK, about a lean decade), Carolina has established itself as a force — and what it delivered most of last winter and spring is worth remembering, even if the ending wasn’t.
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A national championship at N.C. Central
Deion Sanders, as usual, commanded all the headlines. All the attention, all the hype. Sanders’ move from Jackson State to Colorado became a national story, and he was seeking a storybook sendoff in the Celebration Bowl. Someone forgot to tell N.C. Central to play along. The Eagles’ spoiled Sanders’ farewell during a dramatic overtime victory, one that gave Central its fourth HBCU national championship in football. And yes, Eagles coach Trei Oliver acknowledged afterward, sending Sanders on his way with a loss made the victory even sweeter.
Hubert Davis and the Tar Heels finish strong
Davis packed a short career’s worth of emotion into his first season as UNC’s head coach, what with the rough beginning, the slightly less rough middle and the flourish, at the end, that will be remembered for decades to come. While the Tar Heels’ fickle (and let’s be honest: spoiled) basketball fans were ready to bail on Davis last January or February, it turned out he was building something lasting, all along.
Not only did UNC go into Cameron Indoor Stadium and ruin Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game at Duke, but then the Tar Heels began an improbable run to the Final Four — where they ended Krzyzewski’s career in New Orleans. Davis could do nothing else the rest of his coaching career and still own two of the most rewarding victories in school history. Something tells us there’s a lot more where that came from, too.
A Duke-UNC game with the highest of stakes
For the longest time a simple yet alluring hypothetical provided a tantalizing thought exercise: What if Duke and UNC played each other in the Final Four? Would the sporting world as we know it come to an end? Would a blue supernova consume all matter? Would a legion of fans, of both schools, be able to watch it without the comfort of a nearby defibrillator?
Well, now we know. It’s rare that a game actually exceeds the hype, let alone lives up to it. UNC’s victory early last April in New Orleans, a victory that wasn’t secure until the final seconds, came in a game that exceeded the hype. There were big shots, big moments (none bigger than Caleb Love’s deep 3 late in the pivotal moments) and, in the end, one last postgame handshake for Coach K.
No, it didn’t “end the rivalry,” as some joyful UNC fans have claimed. But the most memorable game in what’s arguably the best rivalry in sports? Yes. It was that, indeed.
Coach K’s long goodbye
It did not end with a national championship for Mike Krzyzewski, which, given that he’s won more than any coach in college basketball history, had to be the ultimate goal. Reaching the Final Four, his 13th in 42 seasons at Duke, isn’t such a bad consolation. Right or wrong, fair or not, the ending, and a second loss to North Carolina in the span of a month, is what people will remember about Coach K’s final March (and early April).
Still, he did some of his best work during his farewell during that stretch, guiding the Blue Devils to gritty NCAA tournament victories against Michigan State and Texas Tech. It’s certainly debatable whether a so-called farewell tour was the right way to go out, or if it placed an undue amount of pressure on his team — especially later in the season. If his players didn’t welcome that sort of pressure, then Krzyzewski certainly did.
His retirement was the story of college basketball last season, and it turned every game in the postseason (and his final one in Cameron) into must-see TV. He finished with 1,202 victories (1,129 of them at Duke) and five national championships. Love him or love to hate him, there’ll likely never be another coach with a better combination of success and longevity.
This story was originally published December 27, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
