By Turner Walston

It wasn't supposed to go this way. Not like this. The seniors that have given so much to the program, that have endured so much along the way, they're supposed to end their careers as champions. That's how the storybook is supposed to go.

And for a moment, that's how it looked like it was going to go. Carolina trailed Villanova by ten points with just 5:29 remaining. They trailed by six with 1:52 remaining. They made up five of those points in 46 seconds. Marcus Paige, who individually hadn't had the senior season he'd wanted, put the team on his back down the stretch, fighting for an offensive rebound and putting in a lay-up with 22 seconds to go to cut it to one, then 18 seconds of game clock later, hitting a beautiful clutch three-pointer to tie the score at 74. Hold everything. Postpone the coronation. The Tar Heels aren't going away.

Pandemonium struck NRG Arena when Paige's shot rattled in. He'd had just enough space to get it off, had avoided a flying Daniel Ochefu to do what Marcus Paige does, what Marcus Paige did so often in his four-year Tar Heel career. “I had a thought of throwing the ball under the basket to the open guy, but we needed three, and it was only 13 seconds, so it's hard to draw the game out,” Paige would say later. “I just knew I needed to step up and make it.” He did. The clock stopped. Villanova called timeout. Tar Heel fans throughout the arena were launching their complimentary Capital One seat cushions into the air. It was the best shot of the night. Or, it was supposed to be.

We've heard before that in big games, with his team trailing, Roy Williams will say to his players that if they'll just do what he says, they'll have a chance to win the game. And he did that Monday night. “The coach tries everything,” Williams said. “I promised 'em. When were down ten, in the huddle, I promised 'em if they did what I told them to do, that we'd have a chance to win the game at the end of the game.”

They did, and they did. They got blocks on consecutive Villanova possessions and turned them into five points on the other end. They ran 'quick,' the play to get Paige a look from the corner in front of the Tar Heel bench. He nailed it. The ran a down screen for Paige to get him room to get off that game-tying three. They were 4.7 seconds away from forcing overtime.

“I told the team that we were going to win if we got to overtime,” Paige said. “All we had to do is get to overtime, and the game was ours. I truly believe that, and the team believes that, and I think our whole team believes that. But you know, it's the two best teams in the country. We were anticipating a battle. We got a battle.”

They got a battle with Villanova, who wasn't willing to just play the foil in someone else's storybook. The Wildcats' Phil Booth had made a shot as time expired in the first half to cut a seven-point Tar Heel lead to five. They'd outscored the Tar Heels 19-7 in the first ten minutes of the second, taking control. The Wildcats were writing their own story by forcing Tar Heel turnovers, pressuring to make the Tar Heel offense start far away from the basket, and making big shots of their own.

And then it was the Tar Heels' turn to swing momentum, to start that 17-7 run on the backs of Paige and Johnson and Joel Berry. And Paige's shot was the capper. Or, it was supposed to be.

Villanova's Ryan Arcidiacono crossed midcourt and found the trailing in-bounder, Kris Jenkins, who let fly from 27 feet. “As soon as he got it off, all you can do is pray while the ball's in the air,” Paige said. “I feel like it was in the air forever.” Jenkins' shot was pure. Boom. Streamers. Confetti cannons. The celebration we all knew was supposed to be for the Tar Heels was instead for Villanova.

“The fireworks go off right then, and the momentum that you had been clawing for, fighting every day for, hoping for, dreaming about, just goes away, like that fast,” Paige said. “It's hard to describe.”

It's hard to describe, but it isn't hard to see. It's a red-eyed Roy Williams making his way slowly from the locker room to the postgame press conference. It's Michael Jordan, Larry Fedora, Carol Folt and Bubba Cunningham silently leaving the room. It's the tears welling up in the eyes of the Tar Heels. It's Hubert Davis sitting on a chair, bent over at the waist with head in hands. It's stunned silence from Theo Pinson. It's Luke Maye staring into space. It's Kenny Williams pulling his jersey over his face to hide his emotions. It's one-word answers, more tears, and quiet. Eerie, awful quiet in a room so often filled with so much joy. It's being on the wrong end of someone else's storybook ending. It's “Brice, can you just put what you're feeling into words?”

“No. Can't. I can't put . . . I don't know how to put it into words. It hurts. I just know that much.”

His head coach, who has been on both sides of games like this, was able to bring some perspective. “The difference between winning and losing in college basketball is so small,” Roy Williams said. “The difference in your feelings is so large.”

The difference between winning and losing for the Tar Heels was 4.7 seconds. Four point seven seconds. If those 4.7 seconds go another way, it's not hard to believe that that confetti would have fallen for the Tar Heels. Alas.

Brice is right. It hurts. Right now, it's intense. It will hurt for a while. Right now, it's raw, and it will be raw, for a long, long time, because this wasn't a blowout. This was . . . this was right there.

But over time, the hurt will lessen. It will creep back when Jenkins' shot is replayed, time and time again, as perhaps the biggest shot in NCAA Tournament history, because it was, and it will stir up old feelings of what might have been.

But no shot, no just missing out on a national championship can take away what this team and these seniors have accomplished. No Tar Heel team has endured more scrutiny, has played in the face of more questions than this one. And through an entire season, with their toughness questioned, with their heart questioned, they succeeded. They laughed. They joked. They loved one another, and they were the best representatives that the University of North Carolina could ever ask for. No last-second loss on the game's biggest stage can take that away.

“It's hard, because this group, and not just the seniors –it hurts the most for us, because we don't get the chance to do it again,” Paige said. “At some point tonight, I'm going to have to take this jersey off and I'll never get to be a Tar Heel again in the moment, but this group had so much fun, from locker rooms to bus trips to hotels, we really enjoyed coming to practice every day and just being ourselves, being a loose group having fun and just being who we were, and that's done. That's over. We'll never get that back, and the memory now we'll have is one half-step shorter than the memory we wanted to have. We worked so hard for this goal. It's like someone just came up and took it from us at the last second.”

As of this writing, I don't know whether or not Marcus Paige has taken off his jersey. I do know that he and Johnson will have their jerseys forever hanging in the rafters of the Dean E. Smith Center, and that though there are requirements for those honors, they will be remembered for far more than just being All-Americans. Joel James, too, the senior who first played organized basketball at 16 and never wavered in the face of frustration; in fact, his faces will be remembered for years to come.

And Johnson, Paige and James will always be Tar Heels. There is strength in that family, as evidenced by the dozens of former Tar Heels who were in the stands on Monday night. This is a bond that is not so easily broken. The end of a college basketball career is only the beginning of life in the Tar Heel family.

But for now, yes, it hurts. It hurts badly. But we can take some small comfort in the hurt because of what it represents. Last weekend in Philadelphia, I ducked into a matinee performance of Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher at the Walnut Street Theatre. Random, I know, but give me a minute. Toward the end of the show, there's a moment in which two characters are saying goodbye, not knowing if they will see each other again. And in that moment, there's a line that I tucked away, hoping I wouldn't have to use it, but knowing I would if the situation arose. So here it is. “It's supposed to hurt. That's how you know it meant something.”

This game, this team, this time . . . it meant something. To the players, the coaches and staff, the alumni, fans, friends and family. It meant something. And it's supposed to hurt.