UNC and the NCAA Tournament: Can Tar Heels move back up to No. 1 seed?
As of Tuesday, Selection Sunday for the NCAA Tournament was 26 days away. The first Thursday of the tournament, itself, was 30 days away. There is time, still, for teams to strengthen their resumes to make the field or to bolster their cases for a better seed.
But there’s not much time.
What we know about North Carolina is that the Tar Heels are safely in. They are a tournament lock, and have been for a while.
The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee on Saturday revealed its top 16 teams a month before Selection Sunday, and UNC was No. 5 – just off the No. 1 seed line. According to barttorvik.com, UNC could lose its final five regular-season games and first in the ACC tournament and still enter the tournament as a No. 6 seed. (Note: such a path is not advisable.)
The questions for UNC are about positioning. Can it maintain its hold on a No. 2 seed, which has emerged as the consensus projection for the Tar Heels? Can they, perhaps, still move back up to the No. 1 line?
They were there, for a while, during a 10-game winning streak that spanned most of December and January. The early tournament projections had UNC as a No. 1 seed – often in the West Region, a sign that analysts considered UNC the fourth, and thus “weakest” top seed, given its placement in a region that will be decided in Los Angeles.
More recently, amid UNC’s most difficult stretch of the season, tournament bracketologists (and remember, some are much more proven than others) have been essentially unanimous in placing the Tar Heels as a No. 2 seed. The website bracketmatrix.com tracks pretty much every tournament projection on the Internet, from ESPN’s to at least one that’s released via Google Docs.
In all, bracketmatrix.com includes 98 projections. All but one of them has the Tar Heels as a No. 2 seed. The one that doesn’t? It’s haslametrics.com, which has UNC as a No. 3. Project your ire accordingly, Tar Heels fans.
For now, and with the obvious caveat that things can change in a hurry, four teams have separated themselves as projected No. 1 seeds. It just so happens, too, that each of them would have clear claims to their preferred regions.
It doesn’t always line up so neatly, but Connecticut has a firm grip on the No. 1 spot in the East (where Boston hosts the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight). Purdue, meanwhile, is the clear No. 1 in the Midwest (Detroit), Houston in the South (Dallas) and Arizona in the West.
A lot can happen in the next 26 days — and a lot would need to happen, probably, for UNC to move back up to a No. 1. It’s arguable, though, that there’d be very little difference between being the fourth No. 1 seed (which is probably as far as UNC could conceivably rise) and the “best” or second-best No. 2 seed.
A couple scenarios the Tar Heels would probably like to avoid: Being matched up with Connecticut in the East (because the Huskies, at their peak, are probably the nation’s best team) or being paired with Arizona in the West. Though, the prospect of the Tar Heels facing Caleb Love, who transferred to Arizona after last season, would indeed make for a compelling storyline.
Not that CBS ever pays attention to such things when the bracket is constructed. Right?
In any case, the goal for UNC during the final weeks of the season should be to secure its hold on a No. 2 seed, and position itself to move up in case Connecticut, Houston, Purdue or Arizona falters. The quest for doing so begins Saturday at Virginia.
This story was originally published February 20, 2024 at 2:27 PM.
