Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.

Virginia is the only school making a run at Carolina’s NCAA dominance.

The Tar Heels have finished eighth in the latest Learfield Directors Cup for overall excellence in college athletics, their 26th season in the top 10. Only Stanford and Florida — with 29 apiece — have more.

In the ACC, UNC has earned half of the conference’s 48 top ten NCAA post-season finishes and remains the only ACC school to win the Cup, dating back to the inaugural year of 1993-94. Stanford regained the title, its 26th, after Texas won the last two school years. Stanford wins for fielding the most varsity teams, Texas is just good at the sports it does offer.

Schools that win NCAA championships earn 100 points for each title, and Carolina used the points from field hockey last fall and women’s tennis in the spring to amass a total of 1,068 in 17 sports of the complicated NCAA postseason allocation. The two national title teams were among six at UNC to finish in the top five and nine to finish in the top 10.

Stanford totaled 1,412 points followed by Texas, Ohio State, Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, UNC, LSU and Southern Cal.

Virginia also won two national championships (women’s swimming and diving and men’s tennis), Notre Dame also took home two titles (fencing and men’s lacrosse). Other ACC schools to win NCAA crowns were Syracuse (men’s soccer), Wake Forest (women’s golf) and N.C. State (women’s cross country).

So, more than half of the 15 ACC schools did not win national titles, where Carolina is still dominant with 49. But Virginia has come on in recent years to accumulate 33 NCAA championships, as Thomas Jefferson’s school has built a far more well-rounded athletic program than it once had.

Notre Dame, which joined the ACC in 2014, has 22 natties with Duke (17), Syracuse (15) and Wake Forest (10), followed by Florida State (9), Boston College (6), Miami (5) Clemson (4), N.C. State (4) and Louisville (2). Pitt and Virginia Tech have yet to win it all in any NCAA sport.

This school year marks the 12th time Tar Heel sports have won multiple NCAA championships in a school year. The others are 1981-82, 1989-90, 1990-91, 1992-93, 1993-94, 1996-97, 1997-98, 2008-09, 2009-10, 2012-13, 2015-16 and 2022-2023. UNC women’s soccer (with 21 overall) won national championships in all but three of those years.

 

Featured image via UNC Field Hockey on Twitter

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