December 11th, 2012. UNC’s men’s basketball team is, according to Joe Lunardi of ESPN.com, going to be a 5th seed in the NCAA tournament.
Nearly a month, and a couple losses to the likes of Texas and the UVA “Good God could they please play any faster?” Cavaliers later, the Heels had fallen all the way down to a 10th seed. And this past Tuesday, they fell again to an 11th seed.
All things considered, it was one of the better bits of news regarding UNC basketball in the past few months.
For most of this season now, the specter of yet another NIT appearance has loomed over UNC. So to hear we aren’t a NIT team (yet) is reassuring.
Still, the mere fact that UNC is in danger of missing the NCAA tournament for the second time in four years indicates something is wrong with the program.[1] One bad season in college basketball is, well, just one bad season. But two in four years? That’s a trend, and an alarming one at that.
Of course, UNC could catch fire midway through the ACC season, end up winning the ACC tournament and make it all the way to the Final Four or close,[2] making this entire column seem ridiculous.
At this point, however, I think it’s clear that there’s something broken in this program, and Roy is going to have to make some changes, to his in-game strategy, his recruiting process, or both.[3]
Otherwise, UNC fans are going to be left with nothing to do but ironically chant “NIT! NIT!”[4] for the second time in four years.
[1] The fact that those two times will just so happen to have occurred during my four years as a student here is really just the cherry on top.
[2] Similar to what happened in the 2010-2011 season, although I don’t see any Kendall Marshall caliber players on UNC’s team this year just waiting to take over.
[3] The problem here is that changing strategies has never been a strong suit of Roy’s as a coach.
[4] Not that UNC fans don’t love doing things ironically.