UNC Basketball: Tar Heel women getting hosed in latest ESPN bracket

The latest NCAA Tournament bracket projections have the UNC women’s basketball team lower than their resume seems to warrant.

The North Carolina Tar Heels finished their regular season campaign on Friday afternoon when they lost a thrilling overtime game to the Virginia Tech Hokies in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament.

And even though they dropped their first game in the conference tournament after earning a 4-seed and a double-bye that put them safely through to the third round, it was just their sixth loss of the season and one that came at the hands of a really good Hokies squad that’s ranked 21st in the nation.

The Tar Heels, 23-6 overall and 13-5 in ACC play, are still No. 6 in the NET rankings, No. 9 In the Massey Ratings, and No. 24 in RPI. They won seven of their final eight games of the regular season, including an impressive victory over the third-ranked Lousiville Cardinals in mid-February. They also put a beatdown on then-No. 21 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium the month prior and dropped a close game to a solid Notre Dame team in South Bend, a good loss by any standard.

But even with all of that in consideration, the latest NCAA Tournament bracket projections from ESPN only have the Tar Heels as a 6-seed in the Spokane Region. The Tar Heels had hoped to receive no worse than a 4-seed in the big dance in order to host their first and second-round games, but that just doesn’t seem likely at this point.

And while we won’t know for sure until Selection Sunday, I wouldn’t expect it to change a whole lot given that the Tar Heels have been underestimated and undervalued at just about every turn this season. They finished in a three-way tie for third place in the ACC after being picked to finish seventh in the preseason. They were also projected to not have a single All-ACC player but ended up with two (Kelly, Ustby).

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