UNC vs. Caleb Love, always a tantalizing prospect, is within reach in NCAA Tournament

The NCAA Tournament is arguably the most storyline-rich event in American sports, a spectacle that captures the country’s attention for a few weeks every March and early April; an unscripted drama that has no equal and needs no enhancement.

In the coming days and weeks, someone you’ve never heard of will experience a flash of greatness that becomes part of the national dialogue. A team, or maybe even several teams, will become a Cinderella. There will be buzzer beaters and upsets and heartbreak. Tears of joy and of despair.

The theater is of the highest order. There remains nothing like it.

And yet even for the tournament, the prospect of what could happen in Los Angeles in about a week and a half is absurd in the most attractive and tantalizing meaning of the word. Just consider what could be possible out west on the final Saturday of March:

North Carolina, the No. 1 seed in the West Region, against Arizona, the No. 2.

The Tar Heels vs. the Wildcats, yes.

But, the main event: Caleb Love vs. his old team.

The stakes, if it were to happen: Only a trip to the Final Four — with Love, who last spring transferred from UNC, trying to defeat his former teammates and his former teammates trying end his season. Only about a billion words would be written about it, if a UNC-Arizona game actually comes to pass.

The folks running the tournament, and those at CBS, have long said they don’t seed teams, or organize the bracket, with the purpose of engineering attractive television match-ups, or ones that would undoubtedly generate a certain kind of attention. Instead, it’s all about team strength and balancing the field and metrics and, OK — that all sounds reasonable.

Even still. It’s stuff like this — the possibility of a UNC-Love reunion (or, disreunion?) — that makes it fair to wonder about the pursuit of ratings; the desire to juice things up a bit. Even the bracket reveal on Sunday during CBS’ annual selection show allowed the anticipation to build.

One by one, the show slowly unveiled the regions, the brackets unfolding along with all the potential intrigue therein. The East came and went on the screen. The Midwest. The South.

No UNC in any of them. No Arizona.

It became clear, after a while, that they would be the top two seeds in the West. And how fitting, given all the history there of duels and showdowns and score-settling. And so how about the Tar Heels and Love, in a shootout at sundown? Loser leaves town — literally.

Well, there are some things that need to happen for it to happen, of course. Both UNC and Arizona would need to win three games. The Tar Heels this week in Charlotte will play either Howard or Wagner, both No. 16 seeds, on Thursday. If they win, they’d play either Mississippi State or Michigan State — two teams that are good enough to pose challenges.

For UNC, a regional semifinal game against Alabama (the No. 4 seed) or Saint Mary’s (the No. 5) would not be easy. Arizona, meanwhile, needs to advance past 15th-seeded Long Beach St., and then would have to survive against Dayton or Nevada in the second round. Baylor, the No. 3 seed, or Clemson, the No. 6, could await in a regional semifinal.

The road is perilous for both UNC and Arizona.

But still, the possibility is there. And if it happens, well, “that’d be a crazy storyline,” RJ Davis, the Tar Heels’ senior guard, last week before the ACC Tournament.

At the time, tournament prognosticators were projecting what became official on Sunday — that UNC would be the No. 1 in the West, with Arizona the No. 2. Davis, the ACC Player of the Year, paused and smiled at the thought of the teams playing each other in a regional final, with a trip to Phoenix and the Final Four in the balance.

If that were to happen, he said, “I think that would probably be one of the most-watched games, and a highly-anticipated game. If it happens, it happens. But I think that would be a crazy storyline.

“Just to even think about it and hear it out loud.”

Davis and Love arrived at UNC together, in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic. They spent years together in the same backcourt and experienced some extraordinary highs (the end of the 2021-22 season, for one) and crushing lows (like most of last season).

A year ago at this time, they were both processing the fallout of arguably the most disappointing season in UNC’s storied basketball history. The Tar Heels became the first team, since the NCAA Tournament’s expansion to 64 teams in 1985, to miss the tournament after starting the season ranked No. 1.

It was a confounding, long, frustrating season, with UNC’s considerable pieces — Davis and Love and Armando Bacot, among others — never quite meshing into a cohesive unit. Davis decided to come back for another year. Love transferred — first to Michigan and then, after an apparent problem with his transcript, to Arizona.

Davis said he and Love have kept in touch, with both offering congrats on the other’s recent awards. Davis was named ACC Player of the Year. Love was named Pac-12 Player of the Year.

“I congratulated him and he congratulated me,” Davis said. “There’s always love between me and him. And for both of us to win conference player of the year, I mean I think that’s just all God’s work right there. I’ve always been a fan of his game, and that’s my brother.”

Love’s former UNC teammates, especially Bacot and Davis, have been following his journey.

“I was super pumped for him, too,” Bacot said, referencing Love’s recognition. The two spoke recently, Bacot said, with Bacot telling him “that I’m proud of him, I’m happy for him.”

“And we may play them,” Bacot said last week, of the prospect of facing Love and the Wildcats. “And there’s nothing more I’d like to see than that.

“That would be a lot of fun ... oh, that would be crazy.”

Though Love has been gone from UNC for almost a year he still lingers, in a way, his absence almost as much of a part of the Tar Heels’ story as his presence was, for years. He remains one of the Tar Heels’ most enigmatic players ever — eternally beloved for his shot against Duke in the 2022 Final Four but also not necessarily missed, otherwise.

There was not a shot attempt he didn’t like, not a moment when Love was afraid to try to take over a game. Emphasis on the “try.” At times, Love dazzled. In other moments it was the opposite.

For better or worse, he was never boring. His shot-making could keep UNC in games, or win them. His streakiness, meanwhile, often hurt. Love was the kind of players whose shots could elicit a reaction, among fans of, “No, no, no, no” — and then, upon it falling: “YES.”

His decision to transfer, after the turmoil of last season, was met with mixed emotions but also with a final, prevailing sentiment: a fresh start was probably for the best. For Love. For the Tar Heels. The prospect of a reunion, meanwhile, has always hung over this season as a distant yet tantalizing possibility. And now, at last, there’s a realistic path for it to become reality.

In the NCAA Tournament. In the Elite Eight. A trip to the Final Four at stake.

It’d be most dramatic, even in a month known for its drama.