North Carolina center Armando Bacot's return to Tar Heels is a big win for all of college basketball

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There’s no reason to pretend Armando Bacot’s most impressive performance at the 2022 Final Four was presented on the day between the semifinal and championship game. He put up 15 points and 15 rebounds in North Carolina’s loss to Kansas, even while battling through foul trouble. He grabbed 21 rebounds and helped foul Duke center Mark Williams out of the Tar Heels’ semifinal triumph over their archrivals. Everyone could see this.

On the Sunday that followed the win over Duke, as Carolina prepared for the championship game, those of us with media credentials got the chance to learn why Bacot’s decision to return to the Tar Heels for the 2022-23 college basketball season can resonate beyond his ridiculous rebounding numbers.

“Armando is the perfect example of what a Carolina player strives to be,” Tar Heels coach Hubert Davis said in a statement from the school. “He has excelled at the highest level as a player, in the classroom and in the community. I loved hearing the news yesterday that he made the Academic All-ACC team after the season he had, which wasn’t just good, and not just great, it was historic. I felt he was the best player in ACC and the best big man in the country.”

Bacot showed genuine star quality in the half-hour he spent with reporters in the “breakout” sessions that are a fixture of the Final Four. This is a sport that needs as many stars as it can get, and all the better if that extends beyond merely putting up such numbers as 16.3 points per game, 13.1 rebounds per game and 56.9 percent shooting for a Carolina team that reached the NCAA championship game. 

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With the NBA Draft trending toward those few big men with significant perimeter skills and/or elite mobility, he was not projected as a first-round pick and will have a chance to make more money in name/image/likeness earnings as a collegian than on the two-way contract that is presented to a large number of second-round draft picks. 

Bacot will enter the next college basketball season as a preseason first-team All-America. He might have been an All-America selection this past season had the Tar Heels put together a more impressive regular season, but voters found it hard to overlook the team’s six double-digit defeats and a stunning home defeat against Pitt, the ACC’s 13th-place team. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski told Bacot after the Tar Heels’ victory in the national semifinals that he’d gotten the coach’s vote for ACC Player of the Year, but the award went to Wake Forest’s Alondes Williams.

“I would just say, as a team, we weren’t playing together,” Bacot said about the team’s regular-season struggles. “I feel like all of us were just trying to make plays specifically for ourselves. Once we started to play team ball and we defined our roles more, how we were going to be as a team, I felt like that’s when everything started to flow.

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“We made a lot of tweaks offensively, too. We were still kind of doing a lot of secondary stuff, and we didn’t really have the personnel to do that.”

For those breakout sessions, five regular players are given their own rooms for reporters to circulate through, asking questions to prepare advance stories for the championship game. Most writers and broadcasters will go from room to room to get a variety of voices on the topics they believe most germane to the matchup or the event.

In this case, my article was to be about the big-man matchup between Bacot and David McCormack of Kansas, so I did not need a lot of input from the other Carolina regulars. I chose to sit through all of Bacot’s session. At least part of that decision was based on the fact he was so compelling a subject I didn’t want to leave and miss something good. He answered every question with an answer as succinct as possible and as enlightening as necessary. With reporters moving from room to room, the same question often is repeated because there's no way to know it's already been asked; Bacot didn't flinch at any of those; he simply recognized the situation and presented a similar response to what he'd already given.

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Bacot has played 100 college games and started 99. He averaged double-figure scoring each of the past two seasons. His rebound average this season was the fifth-best all-time at Carolina and the best since 1965. His rebound total set a Carolina record – topping Brice Johnson’s 2016 total by nearly 100. With a healthy fourth season, Bacot will smash the Tar Heels’ career rebounding record currently held by the great Tyler Hansbrough, who finished with 1,219.

It has become increasingly difficult for big men to attract attention in the NBA Draft. At 7-0, Evan Mobley was the only player 6-10 or taller selected in the lottery portion of the 2021 draft, and only four others joined him before the end of the first round.

Bacot does not have a perimeter offensive game, but he believes he has the mobility to be a successful player in the league.

“I feel like, a lot of the things I do, there’s still some space in the league for guys like me,” Bacot told Sporting News at the Final Four. “I bring a lot of effort. I can defend just about every position. I feel like I have good feet. I protect the rim, rebound.

“I feel like there’s a place for me.”

That place, though, will need to be held until June 2023. He’ll be playing for the Tar Heels in the interim. That's good news for UNC, and for college basketball.

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Mike DeCourcy is a Senior Writer at The Sporting News