CHAPEL HILL, NC – North Carolina enters the last week of January on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, although its schedule is now difficult with four street games in its next five ACC contests.
Tar Heels (10-5, 5-3 ACC) has won five of its last six ACC games, thus correcting a tedious trajectory entering 2021 after losing four of its last six games in 2020. UNC’s recent success was a necessity due to the backloaded nature of your ACC schedule. Tar Heels’ five wins at the conference were all against teams that currently reside in the bottom half of the league standings.
The UNC NCAA tournament curriculum is good enough for inclusion if March Madness starts today, although it still has some work to do to hit the bubble. Joe Lunardi currently lists Tar Heels as one of his “last four bye”, which in the bracketing nomenclature means the final four teams that avoid play-in games.
Tar Heels is ranked 51st on the NET, which is short for NCAA Evaluation Tool. The metric system replaced the RPI after the 2017-18 season and serves as the main ranking tool for selecting and sowing the NCAA Tournament. The UNC classification is so low due to its 0-4 record against opponents of Quad 1, in addition to seven of its 15 games being played against opponents of the 3rd / 4th quarter.
The problem for Tar Heels is that the traditional ACC collision, due to a constant series of games against Q1 opponents in conference games, is lacking in 2020-21. UNC played eight games of Q1 against the ACC competition last season and only played two to eight games this season. Depending on how your remaining opponents fared in the next six weeks, Tar Heels may have just five more opportunities in Q1 on the regular season schedule.
A trip to Pittsburgh (No. 58) on Tuesday is the first, followed by trips to Clemson (No. 53), Virginia (No. 8) and Syracuse (No. 40) and a home draw against the State of Florida (No. 21). Virginia and FSU are the only ACC programs ranked in NET’s Top-35.
First quarter disputes count as home games against numbers 1-30, neutral games against numbers 1-50 and away games against numbers 1-75.
The good news for UNC is that it has shown dramatic improvement in recent games. Tar Heels hit more than 51 percent in his last three halves – after accomplishing this feat only five times in the first 27 halves of the season – and posted a positive turnover / assist rate in four consecutive games after suffering a negative-rate assist. of turnover in seven of the first 11 games.
“I think we are improving every day, a little better,” said UNC coach Roy Williams, on the ACC conference call on Monday. “And I want it to be at a faster pace. I keep going back to the same thing, but it is very true, with seven freshmen among our 11 best guys, we have to be much more meticulous about what we are doing and take our time a little bit more, give them a little more instruction. I think if you go back and look at this … our teams, for the most part, have really gotten better over the course of the season. “
The Tar Heels are currently 1-4 on the road, with six of their 11 final ACC competitions taking place outside the Dean E. Smith Center.