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PHILADELPHIA – North Carolina has been on quite a run of late.
The Tar Heels have won nine of their last 10 games, with the last eight victories coming over programs that have won national championships, each with at least one since 1977. That group has also played in 21 national title games since 1977, as well.
Yet, instead of a gauntlet of strong basketball cultures they have been up against, Hubert Davis’ team must now gear up for a school many college basketball fans hadn’t even heard of before the NCAA Tournament started.
Carolina takes on St. Peter’s on Sunday in the Elite Eight of the East Region with a spot in the Final Four on the line. St. Peter’s? The No. 15 seed; the first one ever to get this far in the big dance?
Yes, that Saint Peter’s, but don’t think for a minute Carolina (27-9) is going to take the Peacocks lightly.
“When the tournament started, that was one of the first things Coach (Hubert Davis) told us, was he never looked at seeding and he never really cared,” UNC junior forward Armando Bacot said. “It's kind of funny how it played out now, even a 15 playing against each other because he never cared about seeding and he never once remembered what seed he was when he was here.”
The Peacocks (22-11) have already made history. They are the first fifteenth seed to get to a regional final, and with UNC as the No. 8 seed in the region, this is the lowest combined seeds to ever play for a regional championship at 23. The previous low was 11th-seeded Loyola (Chicago) and ninth-seeded Kansas State in 2018 at 20.
They lost their only regular season games against quality teams outside of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC), falling to Virginia Commonwealth, St. John’s, and Providence. They also suffered defeats to St. Francis (NY), which is No. 331 in the NET, as well as Canisius (258), Rider (243), and Stony Brook (233), and on Feb. 20 owned just a 12-11 record.
But after a bad loss to Siena, St. Peter’s Coach Shaheen Holloway tweaked some things and the Peacocks have been on a roll ever since. It is a similar story to UNC’s, which wobbled around for a few months before fully finding itself in February, too.
“It really doesn't matter,” Davis said about the Peacocks’ seed. “Saint Peter's is an unbelievable team. They have an outstanding coaching staff, and it's a team that has won 10 games in a row and they're playing with a confidence and a toughness that has put them in the final eight.
“At the end of the day, they've beaten two teams that we've lost to. So, as I said before, tomorrow will be our toughest game of the season, but we're very excited about the challenge of playing an excellent Saint Peter's team.”
Those teams Davis referenced are Kentucky and Purdue. The Wildcats routed Carolina by 29 points in Las Vegas in December, and a month earlier, the Boilermakers handled the Tar Heels in Connecticut by nine points.
UNC’s win streak began with a triumph at home over Louisville, which won the national title during the noted 45-year stretch in 1980, 1986, and 2013. Then, the Heels won at NC State (1983), at home in overtime over Syracuse (2003), at Duke (1991, 1992, 2001, 2010, 2015), versus Virginia on a neutral floor (2019), and in the NCAA Tournament the Heels have beaten Marquette (1977), Baylor (2021), and UCLA (1995).
St. Peter’s doesn’t hang laundry like those schools, nor does it have similar athletes, culture, or expectations. It is a different breed than what the Heels have been battling, but there is one interesting quirk in the Peacocks’ lineup that connects it to what makes Carolina’s eight-game stretch fascinating from a historical standpoint.
Matthew Lee, a junior guard for the Peacocks, is the son of Alfred Lee, known in basketball lore as Butch Lee, the Most Outstanding Player at the 1977 Final Four for Marquette when the then-Warriors beat Carolina in the NCAA championship game. Davis’ uncle, Walter Davis, was one of the stars of that Carolina team.
While St. Peter’s may not have come into the tournament with much hoopla, it sure has it now, and even with the Tar Heels’ impressive list of victims over the last month, they fully respect Sunday’s opponent.
