Razorbacks hoping history doesn't repeat itself.

FAYETTEVILLE - Like every fisherman, these Arkansas Razorbacks rue the big one that got away.

They had hooked the biggest one, the eventual 2017 national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, yet couldn’t land them in last year’s meeting in the second round NCAA Tournament that the Razorbacks lost by a deceptive 72-65 given they outplayed North Carolina until the crucial very last.

For returning Razorbacks seniors like four-year lettermen and North Little Rock High and Forrest City High grads Anton Beard and Trey Thompson and second year junior college transfer star guards Daryl Macon, a Little Rock Parkview alum, and Jaylen Barford of Jackson, Tenn., it has weighed upon them daily.

It provides even greater incentive than the always ultimate incentive of the NCAA Tournament, which the seventh-seeded Razorbacks, 23-11 from the SEC, open in Friday’s 2:10 p.m tru-TV East Regional first-round against the 10th-seeded, Indianapolis-based Big East’s Butler Bulldogs, 20-13, at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

Especially as they remember the game hinged on a controversial no-call that the Razorbacks

believed was a Tar Heels travel if not a charge and instead became a virtually uncontested basket.

“I remember the play like it was yesterday,” Barford said before the Razorbacks practiced Wednesday in Fayetteville. “I remember Joel Berry going up and shooting the shot. And we could have gotten the rebound, but instead we were like, just standing still looking for a call, and they didn't call nothing, and they got a basket.” Macon interrupted. “It was a travel,” Macon said. “No excuses, though. I’m not making any excuses. But that was a travel.”

Whatever the call or non-call, that North Carolina game traveled with the Razorbacks to Detroit Wednesday after their morning practice at Walton Arena in Fayetteville and will stick with the Razorbacks through Thursday’s practice at Little Caesars Arena and into Friday’s game and beyond into Sunday’s second round if the Razorbacks win Friday and advance at Little Caesars.

"We lost, so that motivation always sticks in our head,” Barford said. “That question is always being asked, even when I go back home. It's going to be different this year.” Beard and Thompson, the only remaining active players from Anderson’s 2014-2015 Razorbacks that also went two rounds deep into the NCAA Tournament and also lost their Round Two game to North Carolina.

“We felt like the games we lost in the NCAA Tournament, we didn’t come with that passion,” Beard said. “We felt that we let our fans and our school down, so we’re going to come out and try to play basketball for 40 minutes.”

Thompson also recalled the anguish.

“We know what that feeling feels like to lose a game,” Thompson said. “I feel like we lost the games that we lost to North Carolina the past two out of three years more so than them winning it. I feel like we didn’t execute down the stretch and I feel like this year we’ll be ready and we’ll execute.” All the returning Razorbacks know from last year’s NCAA Tournament what Beard and Thompson experienced firsthand in 2015.

They wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play North Carolina in those second-round games if they hadn’t beaten Wofford in 2015 and Seton Hall in last year’s first-round game.

“That first-round game is the most important game,” Anderson said. “It’s the biggest game on our schedule right now.”