Clearly, college and pro basketball have switched roles this season.

When UNC and UCLA, two of the most famous in the alphabet soup of college basketball, play each other on national TV, and neither is ranked, well, it says something about the state of the game.

After the Tar Heels’ 10-point victory over the Bruins, both storied programs stood at as mediocre 7-5. The game was almost like a jayvee contest sandwiched between the Kansas-Villanova thriller in Philly and the Ohio State-Kentucky main event in the annual CBS Sports Classic, this year in Las Vegas.

The Jayhawks became the fifth top-ranked team to go down in this young season by losing to the No. 18 Wildcats, joining Michigan State, Kentucky, Duke and Louisville, and paving the way for the sixth, Gonzaga, to claim the perch when this week’s rankings came out. It supports the undercurrent that college basketball is really off in 2019-20, which everyone agrees on but nobody can explain why.

Maybe because pro basketball has risen from a selfish, playoff-only good game to exciting new heights even though the annual dream-team Warriors are languishing in last place. Is the NBA doing a better job marketing its top-ten moments, while most of its stars from the recent NBA draft are either sitting out with injuries or playing for very bad teams? Or are the pros just more exciting to watch these days?

I’ve never thought the one-and-dones defined the college game, for better or worse. There just aren’t enough of them to crash the sport. But the best colleges don’t have the star power of recent years, resulting in boring games that are allowing some 20 candidates into the conversation about who can reach the Final Four and win it all.

Carolina broke its four-game drought, three of which the Tar Heels might have lost anyway – one in the Battle4Atlantis, at Virginia and at Gonzaga. Playing their first game without injured Cole Anthony, the home game against Wofford became a pick ’em affair.

Two freshmen who just started practicing two weeks ago are the new hope for a resurrection in 2020. Jeremiah Francis and Anthony Harris have given the Heels a new, needed spark, but fans need to curb their enthusiasm for at least the next four games.

Home dates with Yale, Georgia Tech, Pitt and Clemson are no sure wins for sure.

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