The UNC basketball program finds itself in a precarious situation heading into a highly-publicized season finale with the Duke Blue Devils.
We’ve had no shortage of discussions this season about North Carolina’s inability to show up in big games and lack of wins against quality opponents.
Yes, blowout losses across the board to Tennessee, Kentucky, Miami, Wake Forest, and Duke all look bad. Even worse is the Tar Heels’ embarrassing home loss to Pittsburgh, an 11-19 team that’s won just six league games and is among the worst that a bad Atlantic Coast Conference has to offer this season. In terms of marquee wins, I can’t really come up with a heck of a lot, and certainly nothing to combat that ugly 1-7 mark in Quad 1 games.
Having said all of that, the Tar Heels still play in a Power 5 conference, one that used to be college basketball’s crème de la crème. The Tar Heels have still amassed 22 wins and just eight losses under the direction of a first-year head coach that took the program over in the spring following the abrupt retirement of Hall-of-Famer Roy Williams. And the Tar Heels are still the second-place team in the ACC and will go into their conference tournament as nothing worse than a 4-seed.
Do we not think that they’re one of the nation’s 68 best teams? When they’re playing their best, there’s little doubt of that. I know, I know, they don’t seem to bring that effort and intensity every night, and I honestly can’t wrap my head around why. But they’ve won four in a row and 10 of the last 12, and isn’t there something to be said of teams that are playing their best basketball in the months of February and March?
According to some, such as the renowned lover of all things UNC, Jerry Palm, the Tar Heels are on the outside looking in. He says they’ve got some work left to do before even receiving consideration to make the tournament’s field of 68. Does that mean a Duke victory, or does he need to see them beat the Blue Devils and then win some ACC Tournament games, too?
ESPN’s John Gasaway had the Tar Heels squarely on the bubble as of Thursday, noting that they had “work to do” before feeling comfortable on Selection Sunday. At the same time, ESPN’s resident bracketologist Joe Lunardi had North Carolina in a seemingly comfortable position as a 10-seed in the South Region, but practically overnight dropped them back down to his “last four byes” group. They now appear as a 10-seed in the West Region ready to drop out at any point.
Does that potential drop come with a loss to the Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday? Would losing on the home floor of the nation’s fourth-ranked team deem a drop from Lunardi’s current projected NCAA Tournament field? And would the Tar Heels then have work to do in the ACC Tournament next week in order to avoid missing the postseason?
There are a lot of questions right now and we simply do not have the answers. The one thing we can definitively say is that if the Tar Heels can travel to Durham and upset the Blue Devils in front of a raucous crowd celebrating Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game, they’re a surefire NCAA Tournament team.
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