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UNC Basketball: CBS Sports’ early Bracketology snubs Tar Heels

By Blake Cockrum

SOUTH BEND, IN - FEBRUARY 17: Head coach Roy Williams of the North Carolina Tar Heels is seen during the first half against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Purcell Pavilion on February 17, 2020 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
SOUTH BEND, IN - FEBRUARY 17: Head coach Roy Williams of the North Carolina Tar Heels is seen during the first half against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Purcell Pavilion on February 17, 2020 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by Michael Hickey/Getty Images) /
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CBS Sports college hoops expert Jerry Palm clearly doesn’t expect much out of the UNC basketball program next season.

On Wednesday, CBS Sports Insider Gary Parrish released his latest ‘Top 25 and 1’ preseason rankings for the 2020-21 college basketball season. In it, he gave a fairly favorable, but seemingly reasonable, top-15 ranking to the North Carolina Tar Heels. It appears as if his colleague, Jerry Palm, doesn’t share the same optimism about the Tar Heels and their revamped roster.

In Palm’s recent 2021 NCAA Tournament bracket prediction, he slotted the Tar Heels on the 7-line with the likes of Purdue, Richmond and Indiana, and directly behind teams such as Texas, Rutgers, UCLA and West Virginia.

Gonzaga, Creighton, Baylor and Villanova got nods for the field’s No. 1 seeds, while Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky and Michigan State sit on the two-line. San Diego State, Texas Tech, Wisconsin and Duke are 3-seeds in their respective regions, and Houston, Virginia, Florida State and Tennessee round out the tournament’s top 16 teams. Oregon, Michigan, UCLA and West Virginia are 5-seeds, and followed by Texas, Rutgers, Louisville and LSU on the six-line. Stanford, Northern Iowa, Connecticut and Florida got 8-seeds, rounding out the top half of the bracket.

North Carolina’s 7-seed, in particular, is quite a bit lower than we’ve been seeing in other early bracket projections for next season. It’s also a stark difference in comparison to the No. 15 preseason ranking that the Tar Heels got from Parrish just a day earlier. Granted, being a top-15 team doesn’t necessarily equate to a top-15 seed in the NCAA Tournament. More often than not, though, it earns a team much better positioning in the postseason tourney than Palm is expecting for UNC.

He apparently doesn’t feel as strongly about the Tar Heels’ deep and talented incoming freshman class — one that ranks third in the nation behind only Kentucky and Duke — in addition to their established starting front court of Garrison Brooks and Armando Bacot. Fortunately for the Tar Heels, though, it doesn’t matter what Palm or anyone else things. And as last season showed, preseason rankings mean absolutely nothing anyways. After all, who’d have expected Dayton and San Diego State to contend for 1-seeds last season just months after UNC was touted as a preseason top-5 team?

Next. 4-star SG Kerwin Walton to UNC?. dark

Check back with Keeping It Heel for all the latest on the UNC basketball program while we all suffer through month No. 2 with no sports.

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