Examining UNC Basketball’s Potential Road In The 2023 ACC Tournament

The regular season is almost over for UNC basketball. It’s time to examine the potential road for the Heels in next week’s conference tournament.

With just one game remaining in the regular season, we are just a week away from conference tournaments. After North Carolina’s victory over Florida State on Monday evening, the Heels are seventh in the ACC standings.

That could be subject to change, as they must face Duke on Saturday. Several teams still have two games remaining as well, which will tweak the seeding quite a bit. If the season were to end today, UNC would face the winner of Boston College/Louisville in the second round of the tournament.

Now, let’s go through a few different scenarios of what the Heels can end up with as far as their seed and possible opponents. UNC is likely to stay as the 7 seed if they beat Duke on Saturday, but they could move to the 6 seed if Pittsburgh were to beat Miami. In that case, Miami would then be the 3 seed, meaning UNC would face them in their second game.

In fact, the Heels are locked into at least the 7 seed if Wake Forest loses one of its remaining two games. The Demon Deacons face Boston College at home on Tuesday night, then at Syracuse on Saturday. If Wake won those two games and the Heels lost to Duke, then UNC would fall to the 8 seed.

That would be significant because the Heels would then have to face the No. 1 seed next Thursday if they were to win their opening game on Wednesday of course. Miami, who beat the Heels by eight points in Chapel Hill just a few weeks ago, would probably be the worst matchup. Their guards present quite the challenge for RJ Davis and Caleb Love to step up defensively.

Pittsburgh would be a dream matchup for the second game, given that they swept UNC in the regular season. Not to take anything away from the Panthers, but UNC should have won both of those games. It’s difficult to beat any team three times in one season, so Tar Heel fans should be happy to possibly face them again.

As UNC remained Joe Lunardi’s “Last Team In” as of Tuesday morning, a win against Duke on Saturday may not be enough. They will likely need to do some damage in the ACC Tournament with at least a win or perhaps even two.

A path of Boston College-Pittsburgh-Virginia seems like the most likely road to the title game at this point. That’s if the favored opponents win their games between now and Saturday, which is obviously subject to change. The Heels will and should be solely focused on Duke at the moment.

After that, they should be set on making a run in the ACC Tournament, regardless of their potential opponents. The past two games have provided some optimism, as they’ve finally started to hit some shots. For us fans though, it’s fun to go through the different scenarios until then. Let the madness begin.