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2023 Heels on Much Different Path Than Previous Preseason #1 Teams
By David Glenn
Leading into last Saturday’s game against Clemson in Chapel Hill, North Carolina coach Hubert Davis directed multiple players to wear weighted vests during practice.
The extra 15 pounds were not intended as punishment. Instead, they were designed to symbolize the unhealthy weight that extremely high expectations can bring, especially when the results fall short of those heights.
The next day, the Tar Heels played arguably their most complete game of the season, excelling both offensively and defensively in their 91-71 victory over the Tigers, who had been atop the Atlantic Coast Conference standings since December.
“I’m a visual learner, and I was just thinking about something just to kind of give them a picture of what they were playing with,” Davis said. “Whether it’s the beginning of the year, the expectations. Whether it’s the comments from the phone, the family and the friends.
“You can’t play with that weight. You can, but you can’t jump as high, you can’t run as fast, you can’t be as efficient. I just wanted them to play free.”
Unfortunately for Davis, the Tar Heels then lost Monday to #15 Miami, 80-72 at the Smith Center, falling to 16-10, 8-7 in the ACC.
High expectations aren’t unique to Carolina basketball, nor to the 2022-23 Tar Heels specifically, but this year’s group has been dealing with multiple layers of internal and external pressure. Several UNC players self-imposed such energy with their “championship or bust” talk during the offseason, then the media and coaches joined the chorus by voting the Heels #1 in the preseason Associated Press and USA Today polls, respectively.
The pressure has mounted, in part, because UNC has struggled (thus far) as much as any preseason #1 team in modern college basketball history and far more than all but a few of those high-expectation teams, and that’s no exaggeration. Click here for the data.
While it’s certainly true that the “championship-or-bust” standard is extremely difficult to meet, it’s also true that every other preseason #1 team in that timeframe had more success than this year’s Tar Heels (again, so far).
Here is a summary of the results of the preseason #1 teams in the AP poll from the so-called modern era. That historical line is drawn starting with the 1979-80 season because the 1980 NCAA Tournament was the first without any restrictions on the number of teams per conference that could receive invitations to the Big Dance.
Preseason #1 won NCAA title: 7 of 42 (16.7 percent). Winning a national championship is really, really hard, even if you’re the preseason #1 team in the nation. In fact, that combination hasn’t happened at any school since North Carolina pulled it off more than a decade ago, in 2009.
No program has produced as many preseason #1 teams as UNC’s 10, and the Tar Heels’ track record for living up to that hype with an NCAA title run is actually slightly better than average. Two of the previous nine Carolina teams that received the #1 preseason AP ranking ended up cutting down the nets during March Madness, with coach Dean Smith’s 1982 squad alongside coach Roy Williams’ 2009 team as national champions.
Another legendary coach, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, had eight preseason #1 teams, and only one (the back-to-back Blue Devils of 1991-92) went on to capture the NCAA championship.
Note: The 2019-20 Michigan State team is left out of this category and most others below because the 2020 NCAA Tournament was cancelled for COVID-related reasons.
- Preseason #1 made NCAA title game: 15 of 42 (35.7 percent).
- Preseason #1 made Final Four: 19 of 42 (45.2 percent).
- Preseason #1 made Elite Eight: 25 of 42 (59.5 percent).
- Preseason #1 became #1 seed: 27 of 42 (64.3 percent).
- Preseason #1 made Sweet 16: 33 of 42 (78.6 percent).
- Preseason #1 won league title and/or first-place finish: 34 of 43 (79.1 percent).
- Preseason #1 became top-four seed: 40 of 42 (95.2 percent)
- Preseason #1 made NCAA Tournament: 42 of 42 (100 percent).
From top to bottom, those are some powerful numbers and impressive trends.
One-sixth of preseason #1 teams went on to win the NCAA title. More than one-third made the NCAA championship game. Almost half advanced to the Final Four, nearly 60 percent made the Elite Eight, and almost 80 percent were part of the Sweet 16. Every team — no exceptions! — made the NCAA Tournament.
The bottom line: Almost every preseason #1 team over the last four-plus decades ended up with something significant to celebrate, even if it fell short of its ultimate goals.
With only five regular-season games remaining (at NC State, at Notre Dame, Virginia, at Florida State, Duke), the 2023 Tar Heels have no chance at either a first-place ACC finish or a top-four NCAA Tournament seed.
During the modern era, the only preseason #1 teams that failed to secure a top-four NCAA seed were Connecticut (#5 seed) in 2000 and Kentucky (#8 seed) in 2014. Until this year’s Tar Heels, those Wildcats were the only preseason #1 team to flirt with the NCAA Tournament bubble.
Although that 2014 Kentucky team (whose top eight scorers consisted of six freshmen and two sophomores) was built much differently than the far more experienced 2023 Tar Heels, it did offer a spectacular example of a dramatic, late-season turnaround.
After losing three of their last four regular-season games, the Wildcats were only 22-9. However, they then made thrilling runs to both the SEC championship game (losing 61-60 to national #1 Florida) and the NCAA title game (losing 60-54 to Connecticut). Like the 2022 Tar Heels, the 2014 Wildcats authored one of the greatest runs by a #8 seed in NCAA history, ranking behind only 1985 Villanova, which won it all.
The 2023 Tar Heels still appear capable of making either the best or worst kinds of history. An ACC title in Greensboro might meet the former standard, and another magical NCAA Tournament run certainly would. Missing the Big Dance, of course, would qualify as the worst flop by a preseason #1 team in modern college basketball history … and maybe ever.
Keep in mind: To this point, the only preseason #1 teams ever to miss the NCAA Tournament came before the 1980 rule change that eliminated the cap on the number of teams per conference that could play in the Big Dance.
The two most recent preseason #1 teams to miss the NCAA Tournament were from the ACC.
In 1975, one year after claiming its first NCAA title, NC State was 22-6 but didn’t play in the postseason at all. The Wolfpack spent the entire season ranked in the national top 10, but UNC claimed the league’s automatic NCAA bid by winning the ACC Tournament, and ACC regular-season champion Maryland received the league’s one (and, by rule, only) at-large bid. The Pack then turned down an invitation to the NIT.
In 1970, South Carolina won its first and only ACC regular-season title with a perfect 14-0 league mark, and the Gamecocks were ranked #3 nationally heading into the ACC Tournament. However, the Gamecocks lost a controversial double-overtime game to NC State in the ACC championship game, and the rules at the time permitted only a single school from each conference to play in the NCAA Tournament. Their season ended there, despite a sparkling 25-3 record and #6 national ranking, because another NCAA rule at the time prevented an NCAA Tournament host school from competing in another postseason event (e.g., the NIT), and Columbia was one of the NCAA’s regional sites that year.
The 2023 Tar Heels won’t have to deal with such antiquated rules, but they may still be struggling with the weight of expectations.
(featured image via Todd Melet)
David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.
The founding editor and long-time owner of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com, he also has contributed to the Durham Herald-Sun, ESPN Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Raycom Sports, SiriusXM and most recently The Athletic. From 1999-2020, he also hosted the David Glenn Show, which became the largest sports radio program in the history of the Carolinas, syndicated in more than 300 North Carolina cities and towns, plus parts of South Carolina and Virginia.
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