DURHAM — After Arizona upset No. 2 Duke, the local media crowded the tiny walkway leading to the visiting locker room, waiting for a chance to talk to one former Tar Heel, returning triumphant after winning at Cameron Indoor once again.
Meanwhile, another former Tar Heel was already in the Cameron lobby, talking quietly with a small group of family and friends he’d made over his two decades working in the area.
When Caleb Love, the player the media horde was waiting to see, first found out Arizona would be heading to Cameron, he relished the chance to once again battle his former archrival.
“Obviously, it was on my mind for a little minute,” he said. “As soon as I saw they were on the schedule, my eyes got bigger.”
As he was when he visited as a Tar Heel, Love was a target of the Cameron Crazies’ wrath from the outset. They heckled him from the first time he came out onto the court to shoot. He didn’t pay any attention to them all night until his two crunch-time free throws and an impressive assist off a loose ball leading to a teammate’s dunk helped clinch the win. At that point, he turned toward the student section and began to wave, calling out, “Bye-bye!”
Love struggled through a tumultuous season for the Tar Heels in 2022-23 as the team went from preseason No. 1 to the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, with selfishness and chemistry issues blamed for UNC’s struggles. Love chose to transfer after the season, as both sides had seemingly worn out their welcome with each other.
Still, Love wrote “Tar Heel 4L” (for life) on his shoes for his return game in the state and made it clear there was no bitterness.
“That’s what I am,” he explained. “I’m a Tar Heel for life, regardless of what our differences are or what happened in the past. I’ve still got love for Tar Heel Nation. I love them.”
While Love wore his emotions on his sleeve — or sneakers — one of his coaches played things far closer to the vest.
One of the reasons Love ended up at Arizona is that the coach who recruited him to Carolina — Steve Robinson — is now an assistant on coach Tommy Lloyd’s staff.
Robinson spent 26 seasons as an assistant to Roy Williams, including the Hall of Fame coach’s entire tenure with the Tar Heels.
When Hubert Davis took over as head coach following Williams’ retirement, he chose not to retain Robinson. In hindsight, the decision should have raised more eyebrows. Davis, who had never served as a head coach other than with the Carolina JV team, could certainly have used a veteran coach with seven years of experience as the head man at Tulsa and Florida State. Perhaps some of the chemistry problems that wracked the Tar Heels last season could have been dodged had there been a voice of experience in the locker room.
If the decision to dump Robinson was questionable, the rationale was downright sketchy. After Matt Doherty earned the scorn of Tar Heels’ boosters two decades earlier when he chose not to retain retiring head coach Bill Guthridge’s assistants, Davis chose to create a policy that all of his assistants had to have played at the school.
“You can’t do this job unless you’re a Carolina guy,” Davis said at the time. “You can’t coach here. You can’t recruit here. You can’t work here unless you have been here. You’ve experienced it. You have lived it.”
It’s a policy that excluded Robinson. It’s worth noting that it also would have excluded Dean Smith and Bill Guthridge.
After spending the summer deciding what he wanted to do, Robinson accepted an offer to join the Arizona staff.
“I wasn’t ready to stop coaching,” he said. “And my wife told me I needed to take the job.”
At the time, Williams called Robinson the best hire he’d ever made and declared that his former assistant had “plenty of gas left in the tank.”
Robinson, understandably, didn’t want to talk about Davis’ policy or the end of his tenure with the Tar Heels. He was happy to talk about Williams and the latest win over the Blue Devils.
Like Love, he had a reaction when he saw the Duke trip on the Arizona schedule.
“So, I’m going home,” Robinson remembers thinking. “Tickets are gonna be a problem. Why’d you do that to me?”
Turning serious, Robinson clearly relished his ninth victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium as an assistant coach.
“I’m excited, happy, all of that,” he said. “Stressed, whatever else you want to call it, because this is a hard game. I know how hard it is to win a basketball game here and how much you have to put into it. I know our preparation and everything we had to do. It’s always good to come out with a victory over here because you have to earn it.
“Having an opportunity to play against other good quality programs is something that Tommy likes to do. And, you know, being with Coach Williams at North Carolina and Kansas, that’s what he did.”
While Love spoke to several of his former teammates before the game and promised “I’m going to get this win for them,” Robinson was more subdued about returning to his old stomping grounds.
“I spoke to several of the guys,” he said. “Sean May and (UNC Director of Basketball Operations) Eric Hoots. I told everybody, ‘This is a business trip for me.’ So I came in with a focus of being prepared so we could try to have success.”
If anyone knows about it being all business, it’s Steve Robinson.
