By R.L. Bynum
CHAPEL HILL — North Carolina has the kind of momentum that makes the Tar Heels strong candidates to host early-round games in the NCAA women’s tournament.
It’s all begun to come together with an “it’s us” mantra that has carried the Tar Heels since an embarrassing January setback.
The No. 21 Tar Heels (25–6, 14–4 ACC) weren’t among the 16 teams the tournament committee penciled with its reveal on Sunday to host, but they beat No. 12 Duke (21–8, 16–2), which was tabbed as the 10th overall seed with Selection Sunday two weeks away.
UNC may have more work to do, but the 16th overall seed on that list, No. 13 Ohio State (25–6), has lost three of its last five games. The Tar Heels came into Sunday’s play right on the edge, with a NET ranking of 19 and a WAB of 14. ESPN’s Charlie Creme, on ACC Network on Sunday night, said he still projected UNC as a No. 5 seed. It would need to be at least a No. 4 seed to host.
Coach Courtney Banghart’s team has surged of late, though.
“You win 12 of 13, and the way you’re doing it, I mean, I don’t know what more you can do,” said Banghart, noting that the ACC should get nine teams into the field. “If you have nine teams in and you’ve won 12 of your last 13, seven of them on the road? I don’t know what more you can do. I feel like you beat Duke, and you’ve done what you needed to do.”
The committee has emphasized that recent performance is important, Banghart noted. If that remains true, North Carolina’s résumé is peaking at the right time. The timing could not have been better for UNC’s surge after a rocky December, when a stretch of two losses in three games hurt its résumé.
Banghart has not shied away from the contrast.
“If you judge us for what we did in early December, or even mid-December, you know that’s not when the tournament is played,” she said.
There is an edge to the way North Carolina plays now, forged in close losses and overtime wins. Banghart acknowledged the scrutiny that came with December’s stumbles.
“When we lost those few ACC games by missing so many free throws and turning it over end-game, there were people [saying], ‘Gosh, Courtney can’t coach,’ ” she said. “I’m sure the same people are saying, ‘Well, Courtney’s a great coach.’ You can’t worry about it. You’re never as good as they think, never as bad as they think.”
The victory over Duke felt like a direct rebuttal to the reveal show. The Tar Heels won the rebounding battle by 12, were steady at the free-throw line and resilient when the Blue Devils tried to put together runs.
“We’ve gotten more mature, and we’ve gone through more stuff together; we’re showing more resilience,” Banghart said. “We had our senior night [Saturday] night, and Indya [Nivar] spoke about her experience, and she talked about how resilient and connected this group is. And I just kept leaning on that.”
Nivar explained on ACC Network when the shift began.
“After we lost three out of our first five conference games, we met as a team, and we decided that we determine our future. It’s going to be about us,” Nivar said. “We don’t have to worry about our opponent, about outside noise. So, everybody stay connected. We leaned into each other, and that’s just been the message throughout these last couple of games.”
Resilience has been important, especially after the demoralizing 73–50 loss Jan. 11 at Notre Dame that came after a 77–71 overtime home loss to Stanford.
There was soul-searching after that loss in South Bend. Banghart said her captains coined a phrase that reframed the season.
“Right after the Notre Dame game, when we felt like we never even got off the plane — which really never happened in my seven years here — we couldn’t just regroup,” Banghart said. “That was a ‘whoa, what just happened? The captains came together and created this term, ‘It’s us.’
“When that shifted, and they got into ‘it’s us,’ I think they recognized we’re not going to try to be so perfect,” Banghart said.
Banghart said the team became obsessed with every statistical category when the Tar Heels lost, and she had to convince them that they just had to win as many categories as they could, and “we’ll see how it all plays out.”
That approach has been more productive. UNC has only lost one game since that debacle at Notre Dame, and it just avenged that defeat on Sunday.
“We kind of loosened them up,” Banghart said. “To get them as good as we are, I had to be really hard on them — harder than I’ve been in any team in my previous years.
“But then I probably also shifted. I probably also, not lightened up, but reminded them of — it is us,” Banghart said. “And we’re not going to win every statistical category. That’s not how we’re built, but we’re going to win enough of them, and that really is kind of how it shifted.”
The double-bye in this week’s ACC tournament looked out of the question in January, but the Tar Heels earned that with the No. 3 seed.
On a day when the committee left the Tar Heels out of its top 16, they made their own statement.
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Photo by Joshua Lawton
