And now we wait.
Joe Lunardi, who ESPN made famous as its college basketball bracketologist, kept the Tar Heels in the 68-team field after they lost a true heartbreaker to Duke Friday night in Charlotte. Saturday morning — perhaps factoring in Boise State’s upset of Mountain West regular season champion New Mexico — Lunardi had Carolina as “first out” with “work to do.”
UNC’s work is done and its fate now depends on certain weekend games and ultimately is in the hands of the NCAA tournament selection committee, which just happens to be chaired by Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham. ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips will also be lobbying to avoid the embarrassment of having only three teams in the 2025 field.
Who knows whether turning a halftime blowout by Duke into a nail-biter decided by a missed free throw and a lane violation will curry the Heels any favor while hanging onto the NCAA bubble by charred fingernails. Call it valiant, gallant, and heroic — but Carolina still lost 74-71 in a game that was more a microcosm of its entire season than one bonehead play with four seconds left. If you have to point a frazzled finger, Ven-Allen Lubin could have made his first free throw to tie the game and Jae’Lyn Withers stepping into the lane on Lubin’s made second shot are equally responsible.
Either way, the game seemed headed for overtime after Duke fans’ 30-minute victory celebration became faces fraught with fear — from the stands at the Spectrum Center to the bench where the injured Cooper Flagg and Maliq Brown showed how it can be easier to play than to helplessly watch this remarkable rivlary.
Do the 22-13 Tar Heels deserve to slip into their Big Dancing shoes? Depends on who you ask. “Joey Brackets” (as they call Lunardi) isn’t the committee and his word is far from gold. He will get most of the teams right, but perhaps not their seedings or matchups for the first and second rounds.
While UNC head coach Hubert Davis wouldn’t make a prediction, some of the Tar Heels talked confidently about “playing next week.” Among them was Seth Trimble, who snapped out of a shooting slump and hit six clutch free throws late in the game for 14 points, plus 4 rebounds, 3 steals and 2 assists.
Coach Davis did, however, he was prouder to be a member of this team than any he played on at Carolina or in the NBA.
“There are good questions about the NCAA tournament,” Davis said, “that have been asked for over a month. For our guys to stay focused on what is real and that was being the best team that we could become, continue to prepare, practice and play whomever we’re playing, keep our eyes focused straight ahead on the competition right in front of us and be the best that we can be. And for a month and a half, we basically played must win games and in that situation our team played the best.”
Seth Trimble, who has developed into a leader for this UNC team in front of the media, was a major contributor in Carolina’s second half turnaround. (Photo by Todd Melet/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
From an amateur eye, if Boise State loses for the third time this season to Colorado State in the Mountain West championship game Saturday at 6 p.m., Carolina may become the “Last Team In” again. But there are other scenarios where a team that wasn’t being invited earns an automatic bid by winning its conference tournament championship. Like Boise State, which trailed New Mexico for most of the game before pulling it out late and caused Lunardi to do a switch-a-roo.
After the Heels survived Wake Forest Thursday, Lunardi had them in the field, knowing they would face Duke without Flagg and Brown. So the amazing comeback against the No. 1 team in the nation should not hurt their chances like another one-sided loss to the Blue Devils might have.
If Carolina’s season is over, Withers’ mistake will be remembered like the ill-advised three-pointer he took against Alabama in UNC’s Sweet Sixteen loss last year. But before the lane blunder, the Tar Heels made enough mistakes in the first half that ended with a 15-0 Duke run and 21-point deficit. They were on the way to missing eight free throws in the game and went 1-of-10 from three-point range in that initial frame after a hot six weeks from beyond the arc.
Surprisingly, Elliot Cadeau made UNC’s only three-pointers on the night, and the team finished 3-for-17 for its worst deep shooting performance this season. Part of that was Duke’s defense, which was still stout even without two of its best defenders. Tyrese Proctor took most of the minutes covering or double-teaming deep threat R.J. Davis, resulting in few good looks for Carolina’s scoring leader.
Despite lacking much of an outside threat, the Heels shot much better in the second half after falling behind by 24 points — especially during the closing 24-9 run that came up just short of a victory Carolina or overtime. The Blue Devils played eight men, including the little-used 6-foot-11 freshman Patrick NGongba — who made all six of his field goal attempts, adding 3 rebounds, 2 assists and a block. NGongba teamed up with 7-foot-2 freshman Khaman Maluach (13 points and 9 rebounds) to finish out a series of highlight lob dunks, which caused Flagg and their fan base to celebrate plenty of times by patting the tops of their heads.
Dean Smith always said that “injuries are a part of the game” and warned to “watch out for a good team that loses a great player” in their first game without him. Duke will see if it can win its 28th ACC tournament championship Saturday night against Louisville, which edged out Clemson in the second semifinal and has better size than Carolina.
For his third consecutive game, UNC’s Ven-Allen Lubin finished with a double-double — and helped put Carolina in position to potentially win, if not for a missed free throw. (Photo by Todd Melet/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
The best undersized UNC player on the court for the last few weeks and into the ACC tournament has been the 6-foot-8 Lubin, who had his fourth double double in the last five games and his third straight in Charlotte. He will surely contend for the all-tournament team that is announced after the championship game.
“Not just his scoring, his defense, his rebounding, keeping the ball alive, running the floor,” Davis said of the junior forward. “It’s been consistently at a high level for a while and giving us that inside presence alongside our ability to score from outside has really helped us out offensively. And even without [Brown and Flagg], they still have tremendous length. So for [Lubin] to be able to do what he did, against a long and athletic team, [it] was exactly what we needed to get back into the game.”
While they got back in it, though, the result remains the same as Carolina’s first two shots at the top team in the ACC. Lacking a second Quad 1 win to help improve their bubble position, it means whether these Tar Heels suit up together again this season is now — officially —out of their hands.
Featured image by Todd Melet/Chapel Hill Media Group.
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
It should be noted that the lane violation, though a middle school mistake, did not cost the Heels the game — only a good chance to win the game. If the game had been tied at 72, Duke still had four seconds to get off a decent shot in regulation and may have regrouped to win in overtime anyway. But we will never know if the tremendous comeback would have led to a Heels victory had the made free throw actually counted.
I am so glad that Chansky finally chanted. I have been holding my breath waiting for him to comment because, for me, it ain’t over til Chansky chants. Sadly, Chansky fails to address the future of the UNC basketball program, not just the future fate of the very stubborn coach who engineered this season’s slide. Maybe mediocre is the new coin of the land? There must be some reason why Bubba extended the coach’s contract and raised his salary 3x. What possibly could be that reason?
Please tell us Chansky your opinion of the fate of the UNC basetball heritage of excellence?
North Carolina will be just fine going into next year with a good recruiting class and hopefully Drake Powell will be back next year. But it will be a prove it year for Hubert Davis if he struggles again next year it most likely will be his last.Hopefully he will get some good players in the transfer portal they have hired a GM so now all Hubert has to do is just pretty much coach and d d some recruiting. Also who was the second fastest coach to get to 100 wins I believe that was Hubert Davis.