Brandon Robinson believed in UNC when no one else did. His Final Four dream won’t stop
At the end of his junior season at North Carolina, about a year ago, Brandon Robinson thought ahead to his senior year and allowed himself to fantasize about the possibilities. The 2020 Final Four, he knew, would be in Atlanta, not far from where he grew up.
What an ending that would be to his four years at UNC. His freshman season ended with the Tar Heels winning the 2017 national championship in Phoenix. Maybe his final collegiate season could end a similar way, with a run to the Final Four in his hometown.
“That goal still hasn’t slipped my mind,” Robinson said, with a small smile, last week.
At UNC, Final Fours are always the goal, if not the expectation. The Tar Heels have been to 20 of them and, usually, they enter March with the kind of grand aspirations befitting of a program that has won six NCAA championships in men’s basketball. And so, in a normal season, it would not have been out of place for Robinson to maintain his long-held vision of a run to Atlanta.
This, though, has been among the most unusual of seasons for UNC, relative to tradition. The Tar Heels have won three consecutive games, yet still are all but assured their 11th losing season in their 110-season history. Four of those losing seasons happened in the program’s first 10 years, in the 1910s. Since the formation of the ACC in 1953, UNC has had but three losing seasons.
The 8-20 record in 2001-02 is the only losing season from the past 50 years. To avoid a losing season now, the Tar Heels, who are 13-17, would need to defeat Duke in Durham on Saturday and then begin an unlikely journey through the ACC tournament and into the postseason. It is the kind of thing Robinson still thinks about, improbable as it might be.
“I’ve even put scenarios in my head, how we can still make that happen,” he said of his goal of playing in a Final Four in his hometown. “... I pray that we just get some momentum going, and then we go into the ACC tournament and we just try to shake some things up and run off some wins and get to (the NCAA) tournament. So that’s still my goal.”
Among the freshmen who arrived at UNC as scholarship players three-and-a half-years ago, Robinson is the only one who remains. Tony Bradley entered the NBA Draft after his freshman season. Seventh Woods transferred at the end of last season. Robinson said he didn’t want to compare the fantasy version of his senior season to the one that has played out in reality.
Robinson’s senior season has been the stuff of broken dreams: the persistent pain in his right ankle; the car accident he endured after one of UNC’s most devastating defeats; the run of particularly cruel, crushing losses. Yet he does not necessarily avoid the comparison between his reality and the preseason fantasy because of how difficult the past four months have been.
He avoids the comparison because “the season isn’t over yet.” Somehow, after everything, he sounded happy about it.
HELP ON THE WAY FOR TAR HEELS
Amid this long season, a common refrain among UNC supporters is that help is on the way. Next season, the Tar Heels will welcome a five-player freshman class that is considered among the nation’s best. All five of those players are ranked among the top 50 in the nation, according 247sports.com.
The expectation is that Carolina basketball will be Carolina basketball again — that the misery of this season will quickly be forgotten. A blip. That UNC is expected to recover so quickly is a testament to the power of its brand, which often attracts some of the nation’s best high school talent. And yet there was a time, not long ago, when such players spurned the Tar Heels.
In September 2015, Robinson committed to UNC amid such a time. The university then was still embroiled in a years-long NCAA investigation surrounding questionable African Studies courses that UNC’s accrediting agency found to have lacked integrity. The NCAA investigation, meanwhile, cast a long shadow, and it became difficult for coach Roy Williams to recruit.
At points during that investigation, Williams bemoaned how difficult it had become for him to sell a program that usually doesn’t need much selling. Not only was Williams unable to convince most of the prospects he targeted to commit to UNC, but he was also unable, he said at one point, to convince some of those players to even visit Chapel Hill.
“I think people were just scared,” Robinson said recently, referencing the specter of NCAA-imposed sanctions that never came.
After a long recruiting drought, Bradley committed to UNC in early September 2015. About four weeks later, toward the end of the month, Robinson did the same. His commitment came about two months after he led his Atlanta-based AAU team to a championship at the Nike-sponsored Peach Jam tournament in North Augusta, South Carolina. There, Robinson became a more coveted prospect.
He had offers from Florida State, Georgia Tech and Louisville, among others. Robinson sometimes thought about following his close friend and AAU teammate, Trent Forrest, to Florida State. And yet the allure of playing at UNC, under national championship banners and the jerseys in the rafters that honor some of college basketball’s greatest players, proved too powerful to ignore.
Robinson’s mom Twyla “is like the big-worry person” in the family, Robinson said. During recruiting visits, she often asked Williams about the NCAA investigation. He offered reassurance that Robinson didn’t have anything to worry about, and Williams sold the family on a message that, at the time, a lot of other prospects didn’t give themselves a chance to hear.
“It’s more like, ‘Hey, you’re going to have a life after basketball,’ ” said Robinson’s father, Frank. “How do you set yourself up after basketball? … It was more of a not just a four-year decision but (one for) the next 40 years of your life.”
After Bradley committed to UNC, Robinson said recently, he felt more comfortable with the thought of doing the same. He visited Chapel Hill not long after and committed shortly after that. Last week, before his final game in the Smith Center, Robinson thought back to some of the things Williams had said more than four years ago, during Robinson’s recruitment.
At the time, Robinson was a fringe top-50 prospect. He was not considered the type of player who could arrive on campus and immediately change a team’s fortunes. He was, instead, viewed as the kind of prospect who could develop, over years, into a dependable contributor. At the time, though, any UNC commitment was big news, given its recruiting woes. Years later, Robinson still remembers Williams’ pitch to his parents when Williams visited the family’s home:
“If your son comes here, he’s going to get a great education, he’s going to have a fun four years of playing basketball, and a good experience.”
The Tar Heels won the national championship in Robinson’s first season, when he played only sparingly. He slowly worked his way into a contributing role the next two seasons, on teams with championship aspirations. Then came this season, which, barring an improbable March run, will deliver Williams his first losing season.
Had it still been fun?
SEASON OF HEARTBREAKING LOSSES
Robinson said he has often received that question in recent weeks, as his time as a college basketball player grows shorter. From the outside, at least, it has not appeared to be a particularly fun season — neither for Robinson nor for his teammates.
In December, the Tar Heels lost four consecutive games for the first time since 2010. In January, they lost five consecutive games. Among those defeats was an overtime loss against Clemson, which won in Chapel Hill for the first time ever, and a double-overtime loss at Virginia Tech. Then, in February, UNC lost seven consecutive games, including a defeat against Duke, in overtime, that defied logic, explanation and the majority of what’s understood about basketball.
And so when Robinson considers the question of whether this has been an enjoyable season, nonetheless, he does so after those three extended losing streaks, and after the wild overtime losses. He does so, from a personal standpoint, after playing through pain in many of those games, and also after a frightening car collision hours after the loss against Clemson on Jan. 11.
Ask Robinson whether he’s still having fun, and it doesn’t take long for him to answer.
“Yes,” he said recently, as if the question didn’t make sense to him. “One-hundred percent. People ask me this all the time, like how do you guys keep doing it? We love the game of basketball, we love Coach Williams, we love all our coaches.”
Though the record is what the record says it is, Robinson said he has seen “the same intensity and fire” on this UNC team as the three previous ones he has been a part of. The differences are obvious enough. The Tar Heels lack the kind of high-end talent they’ve had in recent seasons. Injuries have done them no favors. And, at times, they’ve found creative ways to lose.
For Robinson, the most difficult night of the season came Jan. 11. Until that night, the Tar Heels had been 59-0 against Clemson in Chapel Hill. It had become, for a long time, one of the quirkiest, strangest streaks in major college sports. No matter what, Clemson could just never win at UNC.
Then the Tigers won.
Their first victory in Chapel Hill wasn’t decided until the final shot — a 3-pointer, from the left side, that Robinson missed as time expired in overtime. Moments later, Robinson found himself stretched out on the court, hands behind his head, staring at the rafters. When one stares at the rafters in the Smith Center, the sight of history and success is unavoidable.
Later that night, Robinson spent time with his parents, who’d come in town for the game, in their hotel room. They’d managed to lift his spirits, Robinson’s dad said, through some conversation and games of UNO.
Robinson left the hotel and told his parents he’d send a text when he made it home. About five minutes later, Frank Robinson’s phone buzzed. That was quick, he thought. On the other end, though, Brandon relayed the traumatic story of a car crash. A driver, whom police determined to be intoxicated, crossed the centerline, forcing Robinson to swerve to avoid a head-on collision.
“It was just tough because it was just a heartbreaking game that night,” Robinson said. “And then for (the collision) to happen — it was just, like, so much in that kind of weekend span that just had me down.”
Days later, Hubert Davis, the UNC assistant coach, persuaded Robinson to talk with him about the accident, and the season. It took some convincing, Robinson said, “because I’m the type of person if something’s bothering me, I’m not going to really speak on it — I’m just going to tell you I’m fine.”
“And Coach Davis … he knew that I wasn’t fine,” Robinson said.
He played in the next game after his accident, a defeat at Pittsburgh, but then missed the one after that due to lingering discomfort. Sometimes Robinson still experiences neck pain, he said. The past four months have brought a lot of pain, either physical, emotional or mental. And yet along the way, Robinson said he has tried to replace that pain with gratitude.
“I got to thinking to myself like, ‘Man, I’m playing basketball,’ ” he said. “I’m doing what I love.”
PRESSURE TO UPHOLD UNC’S LEGACY
Basketball players at UNC are surrounded by monuments to the past. They play their home games under those banners. Moments of glory are captured in photographs that line the hallways around the players lounge and locker room. Before every home game, they pass by a large section of the court, now hanging on the wall, where the Tar Heels won their 2005 national title.
Being a UNC player comes with many things that little kids dream about. It also comes with the immeasurable pressure to uphold the program’s tradition — to — do justice to the legacy. And now, in this age, playing at UNC also comes with uninvited venom when things might fall apart, either over a game or throughout a season.
“Everything’s about the name on the front of that jersey,” Robinson said. “And I think during times this year, when we were losing, people were just, like, bashing us. And saying negative things about us. And it was difficult for us to take it, because we were like, man these are supposed to be our fans — (they) are supposed to be our support.”
In his younger years, Robinson said, he would not have been equipped to handle such negativity. Like a lot of players who enter high-profile college programs, Robinson knew little outside of success on the court when he arrived at UNC. During his first two seasons, he was roommates with Shea Rush, who came to UNC as an invited walk-on before earning a scholarship.
Rush, who has a finance job already lined up in Chicago upon graduation, arrived in college with a maturity beyond his years. Robinson, meanwhile, had some growing to do.
“I think he won’t get too upset at me for saying this,” Rush said recently, “but he was a little wild. … This is a high-level program that expects a lot from you, expects a lot of composure. He and I may not have been on the same wavelength when we got in here.”
For two years, Robinson and Rush lived in close quarters. They shared a bathroom. Their sinks were side-by-side, Rush said, “we’d wake up and be brushing our teeth together. ... You have a lot of different kind of conversations,”
These past four years, Rush has seen Robinson grow up. On the court, he has gone from a reserve who received spot minutes in his first two seasons to, now, a regular starter who is UNC’s third-leading scorer, behind Cole Anthony and Garrison Brooks. The growth off the court, though, has most enabled Robinson to persevere through this long season.
His most determined performance of the season came in the victory at N.C. State on Jan. 27. Robinson played through a rib injury and persistent ankle pain that twice forced him off the court and into the locker room for evaluations, before returning to finish with 11 points. In a victory against Wake Forest earlier this week, on senior night, he scored 18.
In the final seconds, he came out of the game to loud applause. He shared an embrace with Brooks, the junior forward. Afterward, Brooks attempted to put into perspective Robinson’s weird, difficult season — from the injuries to the accident to the defeats.
“It’s been tough for him,” Brooks said. “But, truth be told, nothing stopped him. Nothing stopped him from playing basketball. Nothing is going to stop him from coming in, working every day, man. I think that’s a testament to him, that he’s going to (work). Consistency, man.”
About a year ago, Robinson began to think of ending his final college season in Atlanta. He still can’t shake the thought, regardless of how long the odds of it becoming reality. It is more probable, given the way things have transpired for the Tar Heels, that their season ends at some point next week in Greensboro, at the ACC tournament.
Robinson has endured the kind of senior season that no one ever expects to at UNC. That he has experienced it after he was among the few to say yes to the school four years ago — after so many others said no — seems especially cruel. And yet he said he has come to appreciate what he and his teammates have gone through.
Robinson wants to be a coach one day, like his father. Frank Robinson spent almost 25 years coaching high school basketball in the Atlanta area. When he’s done playing, Brandon Robinson wants to coach in college, or maybe the NBA. He figures what he has gone through might help him become a better coach, more attuned to helping people through challenges of their own.
His first college season might have made it all look a little easy, showing up and being a part of a national championship team. Now Robinson knows better.
“This year has definitely prepared me for life,” he said. “Because as I get older and if I’m fortunate enough to get married and have kids and things like that, not everything’s not going to go how I want. I might set out goals and plans of how I picture some things going. But adversity hits, I can’t lay down.
“... (This season) just teaches you things that’s bigger than basketball and never to just lay down.”
And who knows, he said. He’s glad, still, that the longest season of his life still isn’t over.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 6:10 AM with the headline "Brandon Robinson believed in UNC when no one else did. His Final Four dream won’t stop."
