Basketball
The NCAA is going to give you a lot of reasons as to why, and how, North Carolina ended up in the field of 68 for the 2025 men’s basketball tournament. Unless you are an actual fan of North Carolina, or have some sort of official connection to the school or program, it is going to be really easy to be cynical of the explanations and the process.
Mostly because none of it makes sense, and because it seems to be a case of reputation and brand name meaning more than the actual resume that was put on the court this season.
The Tar Heels were the last team to make the field of 68, and as a result will play in a play-in game on Tuesday night against San Diego State.
The winner will earn a No. 11 seed and get a first-round draw against Ole Miss.
The deeper you dig into North Carolina’s inclusion, the easier it gets to side-eye the entire process.
For starters, North Carolina’s athletic director, Bubba Cunningham, is the chairman of the NCAA’s selection committee. And while Cunningham and the committee maintain he was not involved in any of the discussions regarding North Carolina, or even in the room at the time they were happening, it’s going to be awfully difficult for a fan of, say, West Virginia — the first team out — or Boise State to look at that situation with anything other than skepticism.
The committee explained the actual selection of North Carolina coming down to UAB losing to Memphis in the American Athletic Conference Championship Game on Sunday.
Had UAB won that game, North Carolina would have been out, while UAB (as a conference champion) and Memphis (an at-large team) would have been in.
In other words: There were not a lot of “bid stealers” in conference championship games to knock out a bubble team like North Carolina.
But even that explanation does not really justify why North Carolina was even in the discussion to begin with, and why it came down to UAB and Memphis.
While North Carolina is one of the blue blood programs in college basketball, this particular version of it is not on that level or anywhere close to it. When the Tar Heels lost their ACC tournament game to a Duke team that was playing without two key players, including its best player in Cooper Flagg, that seemed to be a potential knockout blow to their tournament hopes.
Not only did North Carolina finish the regular season in fifth place in another down year for the ACC with 13 total losses (including six in the conference), it also had an absolutely abysmal 1-12 record against Quad 1 opponents. The Tar Heels didn’t actually beat anybody of significance.
While there were not any truly bad losses, and while the out of conference schedule was strong, the lack of any significant wins should be highlighted by spotlights and loud sirens. That is normally the type of thing that keeps bubble teams out of the tournament. Especially when they are smaller programs or mid-major programs. They got credit for playing a lot of good teams… and losing to them.
The committee can try to deny it all they want, but a program without North Carolina’s history and reputation bringing this exact same resume to the table is not getting a ticket in.
But North Carolina is a big name. It has a big fan base. It will pack the arena in Dayton on Tuesday and bring in TV viewers and money. If by some chance it beats San Diego State, it will do the exact same thing against Ole Miss.
The North Carolina name is what got the Tar Heels in. Not the actual basketball.
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