“It was kind of weird,” Rashad said. “I’m not good at the emotion thing all the time. I tried to make (redshirt senior guard) Landon (Turner) cry — it didn’t work.
“I started playing really sad songs (Friday) afternoon when we came to the stadium. No one cried yet, I’m going to see if I can get anyone tonight.”
Despite playing “Closing Time,” by Semisonic, on repeat in the locker room leading up to the game, Rashad was unable to get his senior classmates to break down. They didn’t break down during Saturday’s contest against Miami either in a matchup the Tar Heels won in resounding fashion 59-21.
Given everything the senior and redshirt seniors have been through over the past four or five years — with coaching changes, NCAA scandal questions and the historically bad defense of 2014 — the win spoke to the shift the program has undergone since the first group arrived in 2011.
“My freshman year, what, we went 8-4? And then we went downhill a little bit,” said senior receiver Quinshad Davis.
“I mean (the program has) come so far. We as seniors talk about legacy a lot this year, and we wanted to leave ours here, at Kenan — and I feel we did that.”
For Coach Larry Fedora — who began running the program prior to the 2012 season, the same year the true seniors arrived on campus — the impact of the senior class has been obvious.
“I want to tell those seniors — those 26 seniors who walked off that field for the last time — I want to tell them thanks,” he said.
