By Bob Holliday, WRAL Sports contributor

North Carolina now looks like an NCAA Tournament team. But the Tar Heels do not at present have the credentials to get a tournament bid.

Saturday night’s emotional 82-69 loss to Duke leaves UNC with just one Quad 1 win against 11 Quad 1 losses. No team has received an at-large bid with just one Quad 1 win.

The 2025 ACC Tournament bracket makes Carolina’s quest for the NCAA’s all the more difficult. The Tar Heels won a tiebreaker for the 5 seed because they beat SMU during the regular season. The No. 5 seed joins the upper bracket with the 12, 13, 8,9, 4 and 1 seeds. That means none of the Tar Heels’ opponents Wednesday and Thursday will afford them a potential Quad 1 win.

To get a Quad 1 win at a neutral site, UNC must beat someone in the NET top 50. SMU, Clemson, and Louisville are all in the top 50. Also, they are all in the bottom half of the bracket.

So UNC won’t see a Quad 1 opponent until Friday night against Duke. And Jon Scheyer’s team has already established itself as one of the great teams in ACC history. It’s the first to win 19 conference games in a season. And these Blue Devils won their league games by an average of 22.2 points per game. Only the 1999 Duke team, which went 16-0 and won those 16 games by an average of 24.5 points per contest, set a slightly higher standard.

North Carolina probably missed its best chance to beat Duke the other night at the Smith Center. After falling behind by 15 points, the Tar Heels mounted an extraordinary comeback, outscoring the Blue Devils 12-2 in the final 4:47 of the first half. Duke did not score a field goal during that time. The Blue Devils suffered a scoring drought at Wake Forest January 25, but had been on a tear the last three weeks of the season, winning their games by margins of 20, 30, and even 40 points.

Based on the way Duke scored in its previous seven games, the UNC game should have been over in the first half. Except it wasn’t.

Tar Heel defenders forced turnovers, took charges, and turned defense into offense. R.J. Davis scored seven points in short order, sending the partisan crowd into a frenzy.

Down one at halftime, UNC positively exploded to start the second half. The Heels made their first four shots, two of which were threes, notching the noise up a few more decibels.

Ven-Allen Lubin’s drive put Carolina on top 56-49, a 35-13 turn-around from the point at which Duke led 36-21.

But then Jon Scheyer put Maliq Brown into the game. That changed everything.

Brown had not played in three weeks because of a shoulder injury he sustained early in the Stanford game. Had he rested until the ACC Tournament, North Carolina just might have pulled off a big upset. Instead the 6’9 Brown dogged Davis and the UNC star did not score at all during the final 17 minutes.

And Cooper Flagg, who missed long minutes of the first half due to foul trouble, began dominating defensively in the paint. UNC scored just 13 points over the final 15:33. The Tar Heels hit just 3 of 10 layups as Flagg made four blocks. The Tar Heels also cooled off from three down the stretch, making just 2-11. They did not get to the free throw line. Layups, three balls, and free throws all became scarce to non-existent, once Brown, Flagg, and the Duke defense turned up the heat in the second half.

Pressure, best by the Tar Heels all season, forced Duke into 14 turnovers, 5 more than their per game average. UNC scored a whopping 16 points off those turnovers. Yet Duke still won. By double digits.

Coach Hubert Davis praised his team’s effort and mindset, vowing to have the Tar Heels prepared for Charlotte. Players spoke about playing four days in a row and suggesting their third game with Duke would bring a different result.

But there’s no guarantee Carolina will make it to Friday night’s semifinal. The Tar Heels struggled against all three teams that stand in the way of a Duke rematch. UNC beat Notre Dame by one when Elliott Cadeau made an improbable four point play and then ND’s leading scorer Markus Burton missed a layup. UNC lost at Pitt by 8 before scoring a one point win over the Panthers in Chapel Hill when Panthers star Ish Leggett missed a game winning jumper. And the Heels lost at Wake Forest when they gave up attacking the basket and put up 32 threes, making just 8. The Deacons by the way looked great Saturday in stomping Georgia Tech by 26. Sophomore Omaha Biliew is back from the injury that has sidelined him most of the season, strengthening an already good frontcourt.

By contrast, on the other side of the bracket are Virginia Tech, Cal, Florida State, and Syracuse-all teams Carolina beat handily.

You might say UNC won the tiebreaker but lost the bracket assignment. Still, there is hope going forward.

The team that takes the floor now for the light blue is not the same team that lost six ACC games in January and February. Following the season low point, that 85-65 drubbing at Clemson, Hubert Davis made the lineup change that saved the season.

He decided to start 6’9 Jae’lyn Withers at the four position alongside 6’8 Ven-Allen Lubin at the five. He also put 6’6 Drake Powell in the starting lineup at the three spot, his natural small forward position, bringing Seth Trimble in off the bench as well as Ian Jackson and Jalen Washington.

These changes have made Carolina bigger defensively, which was much needed. Withers’ ability to shoot the three ball (Powell’s also) along with Lubin’s ability to get position on the low block have spread out opposing defenses and forced them to stop clogging the middle. This has resulted in better spacing and ball movement for the UNC offense.

Since February 10, UNC has improved its field goal percentage by four points. The Tar Heels are now shooting 48%, second in the ACC only to Duke.

Three point shooting has jumped five points-from a woeful 32% prior to the Clemson game, to a respectable 37% now.

Rebounding has also improved, especially on the defensive end.

So this team has possibilities in Charlotte. If UNC plays its best basketball it should win Wednesday and Thursday getting that rematch with the Blue Devils.

If there is a third meeting, a third “Battle of the Blues” it will be tougher for the guys in light blue. They won’t have 21,000 fans spurring them on with almost deafening noise. The Spectrum Center crowd will be mixed, with cheers and boos going both ways. Without the crowd, UNC may not pressure Duke into as many turnovers. Also Flagg won’t get three fouls in the first half and Brown will probably play more.

But I’ve been covering this tournament since 1971 and it has a history of producing dramatic performances and stunning upsets. See NC State 2024.

And UNC might have to put together a four day version of what the Wolfpack accomplished in five games last season.

ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi now lists UNC as his “second team out.” Were the Tar Heels to upset Duke, they might well be moved into the NCAA Tournament field temporarily. But if they then lost the championship game to a Clemson or a Louisville (neither of which has won this event before) their hopes of getting an at large bid would depend entirely on the play of other bubble teams like Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Xavier, as well as bid stealing in other conference tournaments.

Most years we see at least a few teams who have clinched an NCAA Tournament berth lose their conference tournament to a team that was not going to get a bid otherwise.

UNC’s most certain route to the “Big Dance” is to win it all in Charlotte.

Source: wralsportsfan.com