UNC Basketball: WATCH the Tar Heels’ Final Four hype video

The UNC basketball program made a hype video ahead of their Final Four matchup with the Duke Blue Devils and it’s nothing short of amazing.

The North Carolina Tar Heels will face off with the Duke Blue Devils in the Final Four on Saturday night in the teams’ first-ever meeting in the NCAA Tournament.

The stakes are high, as high as they’ve ever been. They’re even higher than the March 5 meeting between the two teams at Cameron Indoor Stadium that marked Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game before his retirement at the conclusion of this season.

There’s no denying the significance of this game. It will be the most-watched Final Four game in history. It’s everything that every Duke fan and every North Carolina fan looked forward to and dreaded at the same time for their whole lives.

It’s a game that could propel Coach K to the national title game with a chance to win it all in his final season. It’s a game that could put first-year head coach Hubert Davis on the sport’s biggest stage just 366 days after the retirement of the one and only, Roy Williams.

It’ll be the cornerstone of every North Carolina/Duke barstool argument for the rest of history. Fans will go back and forth about which program is the best, comparing wins and championships and prestige, and when either side comes to a stalemate, they’ll once again cite the time that one of these storied programs walked away victoriously from the Final Four battle seen and heard ’round the world.

And if all of that isn’t enough to have every North Carolina fan on the edge of their seat between now and 8:49 p.m. EST, the Tar Heels released an absolutely stunning hype video late Friday night that gave me chills at the onset and tears by the end.

They were happy tears, no doubt. Scenes of Michael Jordan hitting “the shot” against Georgetown in 1982 and the Tar Heels topping the Fab Five in 1993 began a glorious montage of memories that every UNC fan can appreciate.

We see Jackie Manuel celebrating on the court as confetti falls from the rafters in St. Louis in 2005. We see Tyler Hansbrough give an emotional and exuberant hug to Roy Williams after capturing the 2009 NCAA Tournament title. We see Luke Maye’s fist pump following his game-winning shot against Kentucky in the 2017 Elite Eight.

And then we see this year’s Tar Heels. We see a team that almost nobody thought had a chance to get this far. We watch the progression of a team that struggled mightily throughout non-conference play but galvanized over the final month of the season to earn a record 21st Final Four appearance.

“What we figured out is what Carolina teams have known for decades: that basketball is so much better, so much more fun, when you’re playing hard, smart, and together,” Caleb Love says toward the end of one of the most powerful and emotional videos I’ve ever seen.

It wasn’t always easy; not for the players or the coaches or the fans. It didn’t always look like it was going to turn out this way. But it did and I’m basking in every moment of it. No matter what happens tonight, this UNC team has proven its mettle. They’ve shown their heart and grit, and a toughness that many of us questioned whether or not they had. Win or lose, I’m proud of this team.

But as Roy Williams often said during his brilliant 18 years at North Carolina, we’re here so we might as well win the daggum thing.

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