UNC Basketball: Top 10 moments for Tar Heels in 2020-21

Tar Heels earn bid to 2021 NCAA Tournament

by Blake Cockrum

After a brief hiatus from the NCAA Tournament — one that will go down as a pandemic-shortened season rather than missing it due to their abysmal 14-19 record — the Tar Heels earned a bid to the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

At multiple points in the season, the Tar Heels appeared as if they’d miss the NCAA Tournament for a second consecutive season — or first, if you’re of the mind that North Carolina’s 2019-20 campaign never happened. They persevered, though, and won games when they needed to. And at times when they could have folded, they kept playing.

Of course, similar things could be said about the games that they could have won, but lost inexplicably due to horrendous shooting or lack of ball control. Games against NC State, Clemson, and particularly Clemson are among the ones that stand out in my mind as games that could have, and likely should have been won. And perhaps those wins would have given the Tar Heels a slightly better seed in the Big Dance.

Instead, they won — and lost — just enough to get stuck with an 8-seed in the South Region, lined up with a date against the Big Ten’s Wisconsin Badgers. And although that game didn’t turn out well, and in fact turned into a 23-point blowout, the Tar Heels at least got somewhere that programs such as Duke and Kentucky did not; into the 2021 NCAA Tournament field.

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