UNC basketball forward Armando Bacot wins 2022 Tudor Award for media cooperation

By Luke DeCock

Updated February 28, 2022 7:12 AM

Chapel Hill

It would have been easy for Armando Bacot to downplay just how much North Carolina’s win over Michigan in December meant to him, because doing so would require him to acknowledge that the Tar Heels hadn’t had that many big wins over the course of his three-year career in Chapel Hill.

That’s not Bacot’s style. He’s not one to sugar-coat or hide anything, good or bad and never indifferent. With Bacot, you always know what he’s thinking and feeling – and why.

“I would say it was an unusual feeling,” Bacot said on Zoom that night. “A feeling – I’ve been here for three years – that I’ve never really experienced. My first year was rough and last year with COVID, so having that experience to win a big-time game against a big-time university with all our fans here, sold-out crowd, it was great.”

Bacot’s honesty about everything – whether it’s North Carolina’s strategy or what people have said about the Tar Heels during a difficult season or when things have been “hell” – and easy-going personality made him this year’s winner of the Caulton Tudor Award, which recognizes the Triangle basketball player who is most cooperative with the local media in honor of the late News & Observer, Raleigh Times and WRAL sports columnist.

Bacot joins Marcus Paige (2016) and Theo Pinson (2018) as winners of the award from North Carolina. Last year, N.C. State’s Elissa Cunane became the first women’s basketball player to win the award, which is selected by the N&O staff with input from other media representatives and presented by Tobacco Road Sports Cafe.

“I just try to be as real as possible and try to kind of describe what I’m seeing and what’s going on to give everybody a better understanding of what’s going on,” Bacot said Saturday.

The junior from Richmond, Va., has been through no shortage of awkward times by the usual standards of North Carolina basketball, from the frustrating 2020 season to Roy Williams’ first-ever first-round NCAA tournament loss in 2021 to Williams’ retirement to Hubert Davis’ hiring to the addition of two transfers who play Bacot’s position to this very up-and-down UNC season.

North Carolina’s Armando Bacot (5) heads onto the court before tipoff of UNC’s game against Louisville at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill, N.C., Monday, Feb. 21, 2022. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

But through it all, and through his development into a first-team all-ACC player and player-of-the-year candidate, Bacot has been gregarious, open and insightful about his career and his time at North Carolina, both before and during the pandemic, in person and on Zoom.

“Armando has developed in his time at Chapel Hill to where he’s refreshing,” said C.L. Brown, the N&O’s UNC beat writer. “He injects his personality, he’s thoughtful with his answers and he’ll tell you what he’s really thinking. Authentic is the word that I would use.”

After Saturday’s win over N.C. State, in only his sixth in-person media availability of the season, Bacot sat down with a smile and remarked how much he had missed seeing everyone.

“Definitely,” Bacot said. “That’s a part of playing basketball, and especially a D-I athlete. That’s part of the job. It’s fun for all of us. We love talking to the media. We’re all basketball fans just like y’all, and we take it all in and we read some of the stuff and it’s just great .”