North Carolina is in the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed and will start out in Dayton. We explore why it's in the field.

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Published Mar 16, 2025

Why Did UNC Make The NCAA Tournament?

Andrew Jones • TarHeelIllustrated

Publisher

@HeelIllustrated

So, why did North Carolina get into the NCAA Tournament?

Little information was provided by the assistant chair of the NCAA selection committee on Sunday evening during an interview with CBS. He said had UAB beaten Memphis in the AAC championship game, it would have knocked the Tar Heels out of the field.

The committee settled on the at-large teams Saturday night. The only contingency game was UAB and Memphis, with the Tigers already solidifying a spot as an at-large team.

UNC, however, with a 22-13 overall record and well-documented 1-12 mark in Quad 1 games, made it and will face San Diego State on Tuesday night in Dayton. Both teams are 11 seeds, and the winner will take on 6-seed Ole Miss on Friday in Milwaukee. The Tar Heels are in the South Region.

Here are some reasons we think the Tar Heels got into the tournament:

*No. 36 NET ranking was the highest of the bubble teams vying for the final spots.

*UNC won eight of its last ten games by an average of 17 points. It won five consecutive games away from Chapel Hill before falling to Duke in the ACC semifinals on Friday night. It was competitive with Duke in the two losses in that ten-game span. Thus, the Heels clearly passed the eye test, as they’ve clearly looked like an NCAA Tournament team over the last five weeks.

*UNC has played six games against teams in the top 6 of the NET rankings and 11 against teams in the top 26 of the NET rankings. While UNC is 1-10 in those games, some of the teams it’s competing with on the bubble faced lower-rated Q1 opponents.

*UNC’s non-conference schedule included games against No. 2 Auburn on a neutral site, No. 4 Florida on a neutral site, No. 5 Alabama at home, No. 11 Michigan State on a neutral site, at No. 20 Kansas, and No. 26 UCLA on a neutral site. That’s five of six Q1 non-ACC games away from Chapel Hill.

*In addition, UNC’s ACC Q1 games also included only one game in Chapel Hill, which was Duke. The others were true road affairs (Louisville, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, Duke, Clemson) or on a neutral court (Duke).

*So, of UNC’s 13 Quad 1 games, 11 have been away from Chapel Hill.

*The Tar Heels are 21-1 against teams perceived below them, meaning they were only truly upset once, and that was by a 19-win Stanford team that is No. 81 in the NET. So even at Carolina’s worst, it didn’t exactly lose to a dreg.

*The average NET ranking of opponents in UNC’s 13 losses is 23.2.

*The lowest-rated team to beat UNC was Stanford at No. 81 and it was at the buzzer. So, Carolina had no “terrible” losses, as the committee might see it.

*While we don’t believe UNC AD Bubba Cunningham serving as head of the selection committee affected the Heels getting in, in part because there is zero evidence to support that, it wouldn’t be a stretch suggesting the jersey and pedigree helped. After all, the NCAA Tournament is a TV show and CBS pays gobs of money to air it. Again, that’s nothing more than speculative on our part.