3 reasons why UNC belongs in the NCAA Tournament

The North Carolina Tar Heels are in the NCAA Tournament. These are not words I felt confident I would be able to type in the aftermath of Friday night's ACC Tournament semifinal loss to the Duke Blue Devils, either before or after the numbness of losing on a lane violation, of all things, had worn off.

This entire season has been an exercise in frustration for Carolina, which is why there's not a single UNC fan out there that could have complained if Hubert Davis and company were left out when the selection committee made its picks to fill out the bracket.

There were many times this season when North Carolina fans were ready to call it quits and turn their sights to next year. Near misses to Michigan State and Florida early in the year were a sign of things to come. Back-to-back one-point losses to Stanford and Wake Forest in January raised the threat level to DEFCON 1. Getting blown out at Duke and Clemson seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Despite the continued disappointment of falling just short against nearly every good team they faced through the first half of the season, the Heels regrouped and put together a really good stretch of basketball in the final month of the season. The only problem was that the ACC, which is about as down bad as the conference ever has been, just didn't offer any kind of resume-building opportunities outside of eventual No. 2 overall seed Duke. Would the Heels be rewarded with a spot? Most bracketologists, including Joe Lunardi and Jerry Palm, didn't seem to think so.

Thankfully for Tar Heel nation, the experts were wrong in this case, as UNC was chosen to play in the First Four in Dayton against San Diego St. in a matchup of two of the last three national runners-up. If they're able to beat the Aztecs, they'll then face Ole Miss, with a possible date against Iowa State looming to get to the Sweet Sixteen.

It's been disappointing to see the conversation surrounding Carolina's spot in the field. Much of it has centered around UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham, who was the chairman of the selection committee this year. Even national reporters and insiders have insinuated that there was something untoward about North Carolina making the field, which is a ludicrous claim that shouldn't be platformed anywhere, let alone at places like ESPN or Fox Sports.

As anyone who follows college basketball knows, anyone on the committee is obligated to recuse themselves when their school is up for discussion, and Cunningham and UNC were no different. The suggestion that his fellow committee members wanted to please him by putting North Carolina in the field is so dumb that I'm mad at myself for spending this much time on it already.

There are reasons why North Carolina belongs in the field, which we're about to get into. Could the Heels have just as easily been left out? Absolutely, and they would have had nobody to blame but themselves. Such is life on the bubble though, whether you're a team that made it like Texas or Xavier, or a team that missed like West Virginia or Indiana. The lesson here for all of these teams, North Carolina included, is not to put yourself in this position next time.

3. Not all Quad 1 games are created equally

The first argument made against North Carolina getting a bid was their ghastly record in Quad 1 games. After losing to Duke for the third time, the Heels were just 1-12 in Quad 1 matchups, and if they had been left out, this would have been the first line in the obituary of their season.

A closer look at the numbers shows that this isn't quite as damning as it appears at first glance. Here are the requirements for a game to be classified as a Quad 1 matchup: home games against a team ranked in the top 30 in the NET, neutral site games against teams ranked in the top 50 in the NET, or road games against teams ranked in the top 75 in the NET.

Is this an arbitrary rating system? You betcha. Playing a home game against the 31st team is measured the same as playing against the 50th team. Playing a road game against the 75th ranked team is the same as playing at the number one team in the country.

North Carolina played a difficult schedule, and of their 13 Quad 1 games, only two were of the weaker variety. Those were the road losses at Wake Forest and Pitt. Five games were against teams that finished between 20th and 27th in the NET. The other six were against teams ranked in the top six, with three of those against Duke, who finished number one.

Listen, 1-12 is 1-12 and there's nothing anyone can do to make that record look any better. But if North Carolina had lost a dozen games to Pitt and Wake Forest, it would be much more of a blight on their resume than losing to Duke, Auburn, Alabama, Florida, and Michigan State, five of the top six teams in the country.

Whereas other teams on the bubble had numerous bad losses in their profile, the Heels were 21-1 in non-Quad 1 games.

2. According to the metrics, Carolina deserved a spot

We know that the selection committee uses a wide range of numbers to help inform their decisions, and lost in the furor over North Carolina's Quad 1 record is the fact that among bubble teams, they ranked first in pretty much everything else.

The Heels also ranked ahead of the other seven teams on strength of record, BPI, and according to T-Rank, which is a highly respected composite measurement similar to KenPom.

West Virginia and Indiana were both 10-10 in conference play, while North Carolina was 13-7. The Mountaineers finished tied for seventh in the Big 12, just a game ahead of TCU and Kansas State, neither of whom sniffed the tournament. Indiana finished ninth in the Big 10, a game ahead of Ohio State.

The Big 12 and Big East are better than the ACC this year, but should a team need to finish above .500 in conference play to get in? That may be a question for another day with how many SEC teams made the tournament, but it's not like the Big 12 was some unbeatable gauntlet. Houston went 19-1 in conference and won the conference tournament just like Duke did.

Whether you go by the traditional records or the advanced metrics, the Heels come out ahead.

1. The Tar Heels also passed the eye test

Statistics are important, but they aren't the be-all and end-all of what makes a good basketball team. If they were, then we would just let the computer decide who gets to go dancing, and in a world that is increasingly trying to shove AI down our throats, I'd like to keep that inevitability held at bay for as long as possible, thank you very much.

The eye test has to matter, and in that regard, the Tar Heels absolutely look like a tournament team. Yes they've fallen short against top teams, but with few exceptions, those games have been competitive and close. They've beaten the teams they're supposed to beat, and in the final month, they were on the right side of several blowouts.

The entire college basketball season is like a story, and you want the narrative to get better from the beginning until the end. North Carolina is a better team now than they were in November, which is not something most of the other bubble teams could say. Obviously early results matter too, but recent results have more weight, because at the end of the day, the committee wants the best teams and the most competitive games.

West Virginia was 8-11 in their final 19 games, and they lost to a 13-19 Colorado team in their first Big 12 Tournament game. From January 9 to February 10, Indiana won one of the eight games they played. Neither team won 20 games. Carolina won 22.

North Carolina has talent, even if they haven't come close to fulfilling the promise they were assumed to have when they were ranked ninth in the preseason poll. Given the way they're playing, would anybody be shocked if they went on a 2022-like run?