LAHAINA – The good news is you won’t remember it.


That’s how it works with those Tar Heel games in the middle of the night. The great plays – which we all know signify Monday night’s mammoth comeback against Dayton – are immediately remembered.


The Dayton game? Oh yes. This started at 11:30 and I took a nap in the afternoon to be ready to play and the Heels got off to a terrible start so I sat in another room and then muted the TV and Hubert had a timeout shouted and Seth gave Roy Williams a high-five. By the time the game ended it was 1:30 a.m. so I didn’t want to text the usual crew so I sat there and listened to the entire postgame show. Then I had so much adrenaline that I watched the highlights four times (“The newbie lets it out!”) and tried to sleep, but, you know, a 21-point comeback! So I just read Twitter for a while and eventually fell asleep imagining the production of a junior year Drake Powell.


So yeah, we’ll remember the Dayton game.


The Auburn game? Don’t remind me. Maybe you even nodded off at some point in the second half when the shots just weren’t falling.


You’ll quickly forget this: The Tigers are extremely talented, experienced, athletic and deep. All of this caused a problem for the Tar Heels in a game where they trailed wire-to-wire. More frustrating for Hubert DavisHowever, it was the way Auburn outperformed its team in some intangibles.


“They were in control the whole game,” he said on the Tar Heel Sports Network. “They ran their offense like a shootaround. They didn’t feel us at all on defense. They bothered us defensively. All the plays in the trenches – loose balls, box-outs, rebounds, getting through. “Screens and screens – they lived there and won it all, and that’s why they won.”


If you spend enough time with Davis, you’ll know that this assessment of his team is particularly close to home. Running an offense the way they do shootouts is a specific pet peeve of Davis’s; it means the Carolina offense showed no resistance at all. To say that the Tigers didn’t “feel” the Tar Heel defense means that Carolina’s defenders weren’t committed enough to make Auburn’s offense a challenge.


And he was right, which was especially noticeable because Auburn made every Tar Heel pass and cut an adventure on the other side. Towards the end of the second half, the Heels had to inbound the ball near the THSN broadcast position near midfield. It should have been an easy pass; Instead, Auburn’s long arms and legs battled the ball all over the field, eventually forcing the Heels to make two tries before putting the ball downfield.


It was such a night. There’s something unforgettable about staying up after dark to watch one of these games and realizing that you’re one of the few people still locked up in the Tar Heels – maybe it’s even your sheer will that makes them drives to victory. Do not change seats. Wear the same shirt. You know the drill.


If you’ve ever been lucky enough to stay awake with your bedroom door closed listening to Woody and Mick describe an untelevised Carolina game after midnight on a school night, you can give your dad a full report in the morning. Then you’ll know how especially these can be.


It wasn’t like that on Tuesday. It immediately lands on the list of most memorable games of the season, only to be picked up again when the Heels and Tigers meet again later this season as a benchmark for possible Carolina improvement.


The Tar Heels have now played three straight games that ended at 11:30 p.m. or later. Wednesday will be a relative reprieve, with a scheduled 9:30 p.m. start in the East against Michigan State. If we’re lucky, it’ll be over before the calendar turns to Thanksgiving.


But it will be long after dark.