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UNC Basketball: Tar Heels’ ACC title chances according to KenPom

By Blake Cockrum

Feb 28, 2022; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels forward Armando Bacot (5) and guard R.J. Davis (4) and guard Leaky Black (1) and forward Brady Manek (45) celebrate at the end of overtime at Dean E. Smith Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 28, 2022; Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; North Carolina Tar Heels forward Armando Bacot (5) and guard R.J. Davis (4) and guard Leaky Black (1) and forward Brady Manek (45) celebrate at the end of overtime at Dean E. Smith Center. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports /
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The UNC basketball program enters the 2022 ACC Tournament as a 3-seed. While their first opponent is still unknown, we take a look at their chances of winning the whole thing.

The North Carolina Tar Heels appear to be gelling together at the right time, winning 11 of their last 13 games including a beatdown of the Duke Blue Devils in Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Now, after finishing their regular-season conference slate with a record of 15-5 and earning a double-bye in this week’s ACC Tournament, the third-seeded Tar Heels sit tight in the quarterfinal round while they await their next opponent, one that’s still yet to be determined.

The Tar Heels are definitely in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, having put together a resume that even CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm couldn’t turn them away with, so they’ll simply be working now to improve their seeding in the big dance.

As we look ahead to potential matchups and, of course, rematches this week, so too does Ken Pomeroy of the widely used statistical website KenPom, using his proprietary college basketball algorithms to determine the probability of this week’s winner of the ACC Tournament at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center.

light. Related Story. UNC women getting hosed in NCAA Tournament seeding

It’ll come as no surprise that KenPom favors the Duke Blue Devils to come out of the ACC Tournament victorious, but that doesn’t mean that the numbers and probabilities don’t like the surging Tar Heels, too. The following is a list of probabilities for the Tar Heels in their conference tournament, one that could either bolster their resume for an at-large bid in the big dance or earn them an automatic qualifier.

Chances to reach semifinals: 67.4%
Chances to reach finals: 36.5%
Chances to win ACC Tournament: 13.6%

Okay, so maybe the Tar Heels’ 13.6 percent chance to win the ACC Tournament versus the Blue Devils’ 48.6 percent chance doesn’t seem all that great, but neither did the Tar Heels’ 12 percent BPI probability heading into their season finale at Duke on Saturday, and you know what happened there.

One thing that KenPom algorithms don’t pick up on is the cohesiveness we’ve seen from these Tar Heels of late, and another is how they just seem to be “clicking” at the right time. The intangibles we’ve seen from them in recent games — grinding out a tough overtime win against Syracuse and beating Duke in a historically hostile environment — are things that you just can’t account for on paper.

But we’re all hoping to see more of them this week in Brooklyn. If we do, there’s no reason that the Tar Heels can’t walk away from that tournament and into the next one as a darkhorse team with aspirations of making it to the Final Four.

Next. Latest Bracketology projections for Tar Heels. dark

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