North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour is trying to discern whether the rumors and innuendo of players being unhappy with coach Matt Doherty are true via one-on-one meetings with the players throughout the weekend and possibly into next week.

What he does with the information is anyone's guess. The players have made it clear throughout the season that they don't want to air their complaints through the media like some of them did last season.

If you judge Doherty on his coaching, give him high marks on the court. This team could and would have been an NCAA Tournament team had it had a healthy Sean May throughout the season. The Tar Heels defeated Duke to close the regular season and beat Maryland in the ACC tournament.

If the key players come back next season, the Tar Heels will be a legit ACC title contender and an NCAA Tournament team -- showing significant progress from two seasons ago when this team was one of the hardest working, but least talented in a high-major conference. The Tar Heels were young this season and they matured throughout the regular season. The enthusiasm shown toward this team during the NIT was sensational by the students and hardcore fans in Chapel Hill.

If Doherty is going to be judged by message boards and chat rooms, along with demands and threats about hiring Phil Ford as an assistant, changing his coaching style or anything else that has been speculated, the Tar Heels will have a hard time getting another coach to feel comfortable, too. North Carolina has to make a stand and stick by Doherty and move on and not deal with all of this nonsense.

If parents and/or players don't like his coaching style, that's their choice. But no UNC player has come out and said he is going to transfer, so it's hard to tell if any of this theatre will result in real drama.

The Tar Heels haven't reached the NCAA Tournament for two years, but it's no excuse for another offseason highlighted by a question-and-answer session with the players and administration. If Doherty is the coach then everyone in the community should deal with it and move on until the team is judged on its on-court performance. So far, even without an NCAA bid, it's going well.

Doherty has said he will be back next season and to speculate on anything else would be premature. Like Steve Lavin at UCLA, Doherty is under siege almost daily from rumors. The administration can't stop the message boards, but needs to make it clear that this is a dead issue.

If it's not then they should do something, but this gray area is pointless and outright destructive to the team and the program.

Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.