As Joel Coliseum rocked, scoreboard flashing, speakers pumping, and tie dye clad students cheering and celebrating, not quite ready to leave, four of the Iron Five who led North Carolina on their run to the national championship game last season trudged slowly towards the tunnel leading to the visitor’s locker room.

They walked several yards apart, heads bowed, shoulders slumped, none of the togetherness that characterized last season’s late year run visible on their faces. A season that started with a hero’s welcome at an Uptown Charlotte hotel and a number one ranking at ACC Media Days had been reduced to this: a third-straight ACC defeat, each one more humiliating than the last, and this one a full-fledged beatdown where the final score, Wake Forest 92, North Carolina 85, flattered but did not flush the sound of the panic alarms blaring in the background.

A season that was supposed to end with one more win than last year and a seventh national championship is now a season on the brink.

The Tar Heels are as close to “existential crisis” mode as they’ve been since late in the 2002-2003 season, when Matt Doherty, another one of the program’s favorite sons tapped to lead the Tar Heels as head coach, strolled the sidelines at the Dean Dome, fighting against the wind for a NCAA berth that might save his job. He failed, resigned after the NIT, Roy came home, and order was restored.

What now?

Hubert Davis won 4 more NCAA Tournament games in his first season than Doherty won in 3, and it’s hard to imagine North Carolina dispatching Roy’s trusted lieutenant after one underachieving campaign, no matter how savage and severe the disappointment. But patience isn’t dished out by the gallon in Chapel Hill like Carolina sweet tea. Davis has time to fix this season, but he’ll be held to account if the Heels continue to flutter and ultimately, fail.

The Wake Forest loss was a microcosm of all of Carolina’s season-long frustrations and failures.

The Tar Heels couldn’t score consistently and settled too often for pull-up jump shots instead of insisting the ball touch the post. Armando Bacot looked uncomfortable with the double teams Steve Forbes sent at him, too, a product both of Bacot’s one flaw, that he’s not a good passer, as well as Carolina’s lack of the type of marvelous floor spacing they had a season ago thanks, in large part, to Brady Manek’s inside-out threat that consistently extended defenses and made providing too much help defense too punitive for Tar Heel opponents.

The numbers reflect North Carolina’s overreliance on pull up jump shots, and to the chagrin of Caleb Love detractors, it isn’t just the Tar Heels’ sputtering star guard. The Tar Heels grade out as a “below average” shooting team on pull-up jump shots, but they have taken pull-up jump shots on 487 possessions this season, per Synergy. Of the group, only RJ Davis grades out as “good” on pull-ups, with Love, Pete Nance, and Leaky Black all grading out as average or below average shooters. Those jump shots encompass 23.5% of Carolina’s possessions, compared to just 10% of possessions that have involved a post-up by Bacot or another Tar Heel big. There’s no excuse for that disparity, and there’s no universe where Carolina’s pick and roll possessions, plus their post-up possessions, should outnumber spot-up jump shots by just 3.5%, but that’s where this North Carolina offense is at this point in the season. Combined with the last half in Durham, North Carolina scored just 50 points in two halves at Duke and at Wake Forest, a number that is astounding given the team’s prolific offensive talent.

The team’s best scorers aren’t the only players suffering from Davis’ scheme at present.

Leaky Black, one of the nation’s best on-ball defenders, isn’t a terrific offensive player, but he is a very good cutter. On 16 possessions where he’s been fed the ball off cuts this season, Black has scored 25 points, an excellent rate of return. Instead of putting Black in a position to cut more often, though, Davis often uses him as a floor spacer. This fails, because Black hasn’t hit pull-up jump shots (22-66 this year). Putting Black in a position to succeed more often is Davis’ job, and one he should do willingly for one of the best defenders in college basketball who the Heels simply need on the floor 30-plus minutes a night.

The enigmatic Pete Nance has likewise been misused. Nance isn’t the elite floor spacer Manek was, but he was pigeonholed into that role in the preseason, thanks largely to a 45.2% three-point shooting average last year at Northwestern that was, by any fair statistical analysis, an aberration. Nance took only 93 threes posting those numbers last year. Manek’s career low in attempts was 128, which should have been a sign, but Davis and the staff ignored it. What is odd is that they continue to ignore it, when the numbers show that Nance is both struggling from deep on higher volume (on pace to shoot 120 threes this season, at a 31% clip), and succeeding in the post. Nance grades out as “excellent” as a post player, per Synergy, with 40 points on 38 possessions where he’s been posted up. Why not do more of that? These are the types of numbers that suggest that contrary to the narrative, Nance isn’t a good B1G player who has struggled to adjust to life in the ACC. On the contrary, he’s a good B1G player who Chris Collins utilized better than Hubert Davis.

If Carolina has other solutions or options, Davis has not yet explored enough of them.

There’s an argument to be made that North Carolina should sit Nance more and go smaller, allowing fan favorite Puff Johnson to start at the four. Johnson was one of the lone Heels to play well at Wake Forest, scoring 6 points, grabbing 5 rebounds, and making terrific effort plays, including diving on a lost cause loose ball with 12:45 to play that he came up with, briefly energizing the Heels’ sideline. Johnson certainly stresses defenses with his ability to get to the foul line, and while he’s not the polished offensive option Nance is, his energy and effort could help a team searching for the right chemistry on the floor.

Offense and lineup changes alone won’t fix what ails the Tar Heels, though.

Defensively, North Carolina has to figure out how to at least contain elite guards.

Whether it has been Iowa State, Alabama, Duke, or Wake Forest, the Tar Heels haven’t been able to contain great guards with any measure of consistency this season. Wake Forest’s Tyree Appleby was the latest All-Conference caliber guard to menace the North Carolina defense, pouring in 35 points with 11 assists in the win. Appleby is a marvelous, underrated player, and he’s sensational off screens. Steve Forbes buried the Heels with high ball screen after high ball screen and Appleby delivered, either hitting his comfortable, off two feet floater or dishing to open teammates. As Wake Forest built a 20 point first half lead, Appleby assisted on 7 buckets, and 22 of Wake Forest’s first 42 points were layups or dunks. Appleby also attempted 28 free throws, as the Heels first committed frustration fouls from chasing the jitterbug guard around Joel Coliseum and then fouled him repeatedly attempting to extend the game. Days after being scorched by Jeremy Roach of Duke, the Tar Heels having no answer for Appleby was disappointing, but emblematic of the team’s long-term struggles to defend in the backcourt all season.

Following the defeat, the Tar Heels staged a lengthy team meeting inside the visiting locker room, forcing media to wait nearly 45 minutes before making Bacot, Love, and Davis available for comment. What the trio said from the bowels of Joel Coliseum was striking, both in its candor and its lack of clear-headed answers for a season slowly going sour.

“Our backs are against the wall, no doubt,” Bacot offered plainly, referencing North Carolina’s status as a bubble team that is likely “safe” for now but only slightly so.

The Tar Heels didn’t look like a tournament team against the Demon Deacons.

Wake Forest, considered on the outside looking in of the Field of 68 before the game, looked like the team that merited an invite. Wake Forest led by double-digits for 30 minutes Tuesday night, and by as many as 26 points in the second half. The Tar Heels? They looked like a team only “safe” due to the names on their jerseys. The Tar Hels are 1-8 in Quad 1 games, and the lone Quad 1 win, over Ohio State on a neutral floor, may become less than that if the Buckeyes can’t end a skid where they have lost 9 of 10 games. The Tar Heels are just 6-9 in Quad 1 and Quad 2 games, and while they haven’t lost a Quad 3 or Quad 4 game (9-0), hanging your hat on “no bad losses” does not a Selection Sunday success story make.

No preseason number 1 has, since the NCAA Tournament field expanded to 64 in 1984-1985, missed the tournament entirely, but the Tar Heels appear on the edge of making ignominious history in a season where immortality was the expectation.

“This isn’t about coaching or x and o’s,” Caleb Love insisted Tuesday, also acknowledging the gravity of the situation after another miserable game where he started 0-6 from the field only to salvage his stat line late with the game well out of reach. “We have to compete better.”

A team with 4 returning starters that was 2 possessions and a simple twist of fate (or an ankle) from being national champion needs to compete better? There aren’t enough bars on Franklin Street for that to make sense.

What does make sense is the path ahead for the Tar Heels. Any hope for a turnaround starts with a brutal Saturday-Monday homestand against league leader Clemson Saturday and the league’s best team, Miami, to follow. The Tar Heels are 13-1 at the Dean E. Smith Center, and if they get to 15-1, they’ll add a Quad 2 and Quad 1 victory to their ledger and feel better about their tournament position, while potentially building momentum for another late year run in the process. Lose one game or both? Well, the Tar Heels can’t really contemplate that right now.

“We’re not going to quit, I can tell you that,” Bacot insisted.

They didn’t last season, that’s for sure.

But this year has felt different. The Tar Heels better hope the ending is similar.