How UNC basketball’s Cade Tyson has maintained faith amid criticism, noise of tough season
The first of Cade Tyson’s six points on Monday night at Florida State came after he rebounded a teammate’s missed shot and quickly scored to break a tie. About five minutes remained in the first half and the Seminoles then were testing North Carolina in a game the Tar Heels had to have. Upon his put-back, Tyson offered a slight flex; a small manifestation of burgeoning confidence.
He later called it an “energy play,” this rebound-score-and-flex sequence, and he followed it with two more made shots in the next few minutes — the first a pump-fake and layup after an inbounds pass under the basket and then the next a long jump shot from the left wing. It’d been a close game then, a small but feisty home crowd urging FSU on, and here was Tyson: contributing. Belonging.
Proving that, yes, he can play at this level. That he’s capable. That he’s needed, still.
“We don’t win the game without Cade,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said in the moments after the Tar Heels’ 96-85 victory, and let those words sink in: We don’t win the game without Cade. Davis can be hyperbolic in his praise at times, and effusive in his positivity, but on Monday night he spoke the truth. The Tar Heels needed Tyson and Tyson delivered.
And, well, that’s been a rarity these past few months — both the needing and the delivering.
Indeed, it has been a long season for Tyson. A disappointing season, in a lot of ways. A frustrating, confounding season in which he hasn’t always or even often appeared all that comfortable; as if the transition from Belmont to North Carolina turned out to be much more daunting than he ever thought possible. Not that he thought it’d be easy, necessarily, but still.
Tyson, a junior from the small town of Monroe, a little ways southeast of Charlotte, was a second-team all-conference player a season ago at Belmont. When he entered the transfer portal he attracted no shortage of interest. At 6-foot-7 he had good size, and an enviable shooting touch. He became one of the most coveted prospects in the portal.
His commitment to UNC was celebrated late last April. The thought went that Davis, approaching his fourth year as the Tar Heels’ head coach, had pulled off something of a coup. Tyson chose the Tar Heels over Tennessee and, in the process, appeared to fill an enormous void. Harrison Ingram and Cormac Ryan were gone, yes, but Cade Tyson was coming, and thank goodness.
Success seemed ordained. If anything, though, Tyson’s first season in Chapel Hill has underscored the unpredictability of the portal, on both ends. It’s not like blindly reaching into a grab bag — not exactly, anyway, but the process can be fraught both for coaches and incoming players.
For coaches, actual scouting and recruiting time is limited. For transferring players, the window to take visits and make important, life-changing decisions is condensed. Tyson realized a lifelong dream when he committed to UNC, though it was impossible to know at the time what awaited; that he was starting a journey that has tested his fortitude and resilience and capacity for pain.
The low points have been innumerable. Tyson has gone scoreless this season more often than he has scored. There have been games, and one as recently as UNC’s victory on Feb. 15 at Syracuse, when he hasn’t left the bench. When he has left the bench, there have been many others in which he has looked out of place and out of sorts, as if his confidence left him.
It has been painful to watch, in moments. The times when, after a mistake, Tyson has been yanked off the court and summoned back to the bench. The moments when he has appeared tentative and unsure. That time, during the second half of a lopsided defeat at Duke, when he launched a wayward 3-point attempt from the corner, the shot ricochetting of the side of the backboard.
Behind him, among the spectators near the UNC bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Tar Heels supporters winced. More than one shook their heads. Some covered their faces. Others whispered among themselves. They couldn’t have been saying anything that hasn’t already been written on social media or that Tyson hasn’t already thought himself. He understands the angst. He lives it.
Late Monday night, standing outside the Tar Heels locker room, Tyson spoke plainly about the most difficult basketball season of his life. There was no sugarcoating anything.
“You know,” he said, “I feel like I haven’t accomplished much here.”
Context is important, and in this context Tyson was talking about recent performances in which he has provided some glimpses of the possibilities. In the first half of the Tar Heels’ recent rout of N.C. State, Tyson made a pair of 3-pointers — his first game with more than one 3 since Dec. 15 — that had frenzied, snow-bound students chanting his name.
And then came the spurt of productivity Monday night in Tallahassee: the offensive rebound and put-back, the finish on an in-bounds play, the long jump shot; plays, all, that helped steady the Tar Heels while the Seminoles were doing their best to rattle a UNC team that hasn’t always maintained its mettle in difficult environments or moments.
The flashes against N.C. State and again on Monday night at FSU reaffirmed what Tyson has always believed: That, yes, he can do this. That the stage isn’t too bright. That maybe he needed some time — a lot of it, it has turned out — to adjust?
“I feel like I’ve always been confident in my abilities,” he said. “It’s just kind of, you know, putting it out there for everybody else to see in a different environment.”
He acknowledged the obvious, too: Life in the ACC, down as it is, isn’t exactly like life at Belmont in the Missouri Valley Conference.
“The Missouri Valley guys were definitely smaller,” Tyson said.
For once in this long season, he was smiling on Monday night. That has been challenging at times, too: finding joy. Blocking out the noise, both internal and external.
The late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel in recent years has inspired a lot of laughs by having celebrities read mean tweets about themselves, and Tyson could fill an entire show — or maybe a two-hour special — if he was ever asked to recite the mean things fans and analysts and even former UNC players have said or written about him. The criticism has been relentless.
Tyson has seen some of it. Of course he has.
But “I try and drown most of it out,” he said. Part of that effort has included writing notes to himself that he leaves around home in places he’ll see them. A man of faith, Tyson started a team Bible study group with Elijah Davis, a UNC walk-on and the son of the Tar Heels’ head coach, and Tyson has stuck some of his favorite Bible verses to his refrigerator, where he can be reminded.
Those verses include one from the book of Peter, about restoration after suffering, and another from Proverbs, about putting action to words and working through adversity. Tyson has also found comfort in deep conversations with his brother, Hunter, a former standout at Clemson, and through the pain of months of disappointment, Tyson has “tried to keep the positivity up.”
Slowly, the faith has paid dividends. There was the small breakout against State. The moments of production against the Seminoles. Tyson’s confidence appeared to grow on Monday night. He looked more comfortable. He looked like he believed he belonged, and Hubert Davis singled him out inside the Tar Heels’ locker room.
“I’ve told the guys that, you know, I can’t tell you when, where, how, the manner in which your number is going to be called,” Davis said. “But your job responsibility is when your number is called to be ready. And there have been times where Cade’s number hasn’t been called, and he has stayed prepared and ready, and his number has been called over the last three games.
“And tonight he was awesome, on both ends of the floor.”
It had been a long time coming. In moments the past three games, Tyson has been the player UNC believed it was getting last summer. Whether it’s the start of a true breakout remains to be seen. For the first time since the start of the conference season, though, Tyson has experienced sustained success. His confidence has grown. He has blocked out the noise, and vindicated his faith.
This story was originally published February 25, 2025 at 10:57 AM.
