Why isn’t North Carolina playing in the NCAA tournament?
By now you’ve probably got your bracket filled out and we imagine that as you look at all the teams, you’re wondering where are the North Carolina Tar Heels?
From Michael Jordan to Vince Carter, the North Carolina Tar Heels have given the world of basketball several top talents, which is precisely why it borders on bizarre to find that they aren’t in this year’s National Championship. Yet the question remains, what went wrong?
North Carolina didn’t make the cut
Now that the field is set in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, one can’t help but notice the glaringly obvious absence of one team in particular, North Carolina. Indeed, while there are many teams with a storied history among the 64 that will participate, it goes without saying that the Tar Heels are among the biggest of them. This after all is the university that gave us Michael Jordan. So, what’s the deal? Why aren’t North Carolina, a team you’d expect to be in the Sweet 16 at least, in the tournament?
The simple answer is that the Tar Heels didn’t do enough to book a spot. To be clear, whether you’re a casual fan of college basketball, or the kind who follows each and every game, that reality is no less shocking. Consider for a moment, that just a year ago UNC played in the national title game. So, what happened?
Where did the Tar Heels go wrong?
Though they lost the above-mentioned title game to the Kansas Jayhawks, who mounted a historic comeback, UNC came into this season as the projected No. 1 team in the country. Indeed, many people bet on them to repeat their trip to the title game. Yet, it was not meant to be. Following a four-game losing streak in the early stages of the season it was clear something was different. By December they were ranked 25th in the nation and it wasn’t long after, that they essentially dropped out of the rankings all together due to their conference struggles.
When it finally came down to it, the Tar Heels needed to win the ACC tournament outright or at the very least, put some impressive wins on the board. Ultimately, Virginia put them down in the quarterfinals and that as they say, was that. To be clear, UNC is now the first team since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in the 1980s, to miss the big dance after being the No. 1 preseason team. At this point, it will be interesting to see what steps they take to correct their course when the next season arrives. Needless to say, there will be quite a few.