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CHAPEL HILL — North Carolina may have kept its hopes alive of making the NCAA tournament with a Quad 2 home 67–66 victory Saturday over Pittsburgh, but the win did little to bolster the team’s resume, and there was bad NET ranking news. The Tar Heels (14–10, 7–5 ACC), who fell to 44th in the NET ranking after the loss at Duke a week earlier, slipped to 45th even though they didn’t play last week and stayed at 45th after the victory.
The Brooklyn Nets’ Cameron Johnson, on pace for career-highs in several categories, will be one of eight players in the 3-Point Contest on NBA All-Star weekend. Johnson scored 17 points and three 3-pointers in Brooklyn’s 119–112 Wednesday home loss to Washington in his return after missing six games with a right ankle sprain.
You know that Carolina football has changed when Snoop Dogg talks about the program’s head football coach. That happened during the NFL Honors ceremony that the entertainer hosted Thursday night when he couldn’t help but notice Coach Bill Belichick arriving at the event in New Orleans with his 24-year-old girlfriend, Jordon Hudson.
The ACC drastically changed the league’s baseball tournament format on Wednesday, with all 16 teams making a single-elimination tournament.
With North Carolina’s chances of making the NCAA men’s tournament looking dire, a stretch of two games in three days beginning Saturday is crucial. Only 14.4% of bracket projections listed on Bracket Matrix (13 of 90) have the Tar Heels (13–10, 6–5 ACC) in the field 40 days away from Selection Sunday, with 12 of them predicting the Tar Heels as a No. 11 seed, which would mean a trip to Dayton, Ohio, for the First Four.
North Carolina’s men’s basketball program will join UNC’s football program and many other basketball programs in adding a general manager, Coach Hubert Davis said on Monday night. During the “Hubert Davis Live” radio show, the fourth-year head coach said that a bigger staff is essential and that “we’re going to hire a GM.”
Caleb Love and Kerwin Walton had big games Saturday to help their streaking teams earn road victories, while Dontrez Styles had his best game of the season in a loss for slumping N.C. State and Ali Zelaya had her career-best game to finish a monster weekend. Both Love and Dawson Garcia hit memorable recent buzzer-beaters.
Alyssa Ustby did it all for No. 15 North Carolina to help the Tar Heels complete a huge 2–0 week in California. Ustby scored 16 points, tied her career-high with four 3-pointers and made a crucial defensive play at the end to help UNC hold on for a 69–67 victory Sunday at Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto, Calif., after Stanford erased a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit.
North Carolina’s men’s basketball team clearly has a lot of work to do 43 days away from Selection Sunday, and that’s reflected in the latest bracket projections. The Tar Heels (13–10, 6–5 ACC) are left out of the field on 49.4% of the projections listed on Bracket Matrix (45 of 91), with the highest projection as a No. 10 seed by three: by Jason Wells (released Monday), Guru and NP.
DURHAM — Giving up height at every position, a daunting matchup for North Carolina turned into a nightmare, and the Tar Heels didn’t put up much of a fight until it was too late against No. 2 Duke. The talented Blue Devils took control early and rolled to an 87–70 victory at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday night. UNC made the final score closer with an 18–2 run but lost for the fourth time in five games as an NCAA berth starts to look out of reach.
North Carolina making the College Football Playoff in Bill Belichick’s first season as coach? That’s the prediction of ESPN’s Bill Connelly in a column published last week, listing the Tar Heels as earning one of the at-large bids.
CHAPEL HILL — It’s a sign that Coach Scott Forbes has returned North Carolina to one of the nation’s best programs when losing six draft picks hasn’t changed lofty expectations. The Tar Heels, No. 6 in the D1 Baseball preseason poll, reloaded.
PITTSBURGH — How North Carolina is losing has changed since the New Year, but the common maddening pattern remains — the Tar Heels rarely put two good halves together and have trouble finishing games. In November and December, UNC (13–8, 6–3 ACC) routinely fell behind by double digits in the first half and, in most cases, surged in the second half to make a game of it, with varied results, the latest a 73–65 loss Tuesday at Pittsburgh.
PITTSBURGH — North Carolina came to Pittsburgh hoping to get off the NCAA bubble, and with sloppy, disjointed offense, the Tar Heels may have done that. Just not in the way they expected. The Tar Heels are probably looking up at the bubble after blowing a 10-point first-half lead and falling 73–65 Tuesday night at the Petersen Events Center.
Even after surviving what would have been a devastating home loss to Boston College, North Carolina’s NCAA tournament hopes are teetering after the Tar Heels began a tough four-game stretch with a Quad 1 loss. Only 50 of 86 bracket projections on Bracket Matrix have UNC in the field, with the average seed being the fourth-highest No. 11 seed. The Tar Heels (13–9, 6–4 ACC) were already in a bad position before Tuesday’s 73–65 loss at Pittsburgh dropped them from 40th to 42nd in the NET rankings.
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