Death, taxes and Hubert Davis figuring it out in March. The North Carolina Tar Heels continued their late-season surge on Saturday afternoon, steamrolling Miami in a 92-73 blowout in Chapel Hill. That's now five wins in a row for the Heels, who have resuscitated their NCAA Tournament hopes — and potentially saved Davis' job — after being more or less left for dead at the start of February.
Granted, the soft underbelly of the ACC has helped a bit; none of those five wins (Syracuse, NC State, Virginia, Florida State and the 'Canes) came against teams currently projected to make the Big Dance, and four of them came against teams under .500 overall. Still, beating the teams you're supposed to beat is a marked improvement over where this program was just a few weeks ago, and UNC now finds itself fifth in the ACC at 12-6 in conference (19-11 overall). Even better, the Heels got some big help from their fellow bubble teams that could make the difference on Selection Sunday.
UNC Bracketology: Miami win helps, but only so much
UNC appeared to be just on the wrong side of the bubble entering Saturday, with ESPN's Joe Lunardi putting them as his first team out in his latest bracket projection earlier this week. It's not hard to see why: The Heels entered the weekend with a mediocre 45 NET rating and an abysmal 1-10 record in Quad 1 games, without much beyond neutral-court wins over UCLA and Dayton and a home win over SMU to hang their hats on.
The win over Miami won't do much to help either of those numbers. But UNC did put up an impressive margin of victory, shooting 10-of-18 from deep and leading by double-digits for more or less the entire second half. They also got a fair bit of help elsewhere in the early slate: Oklahoma missed out on an upset opportunity at Ole Miss, while both Arkansas (at South Carolina) and Nebraska (vs. Minnesota) suffered bad losses that could significantly ding their resumes. That's three of Lunardi's four Last Four In, and it could be enough to bump UNC into the First Four when the next projections come out early next week.
At this point, UNC is probably in if they just beat the teams they're supposed to beat: Take care of business at Virginia Tech on Tuesday, win at least one game in the ACC Tournament, and that should be enough. Of course, a home upset over Duke to end the regular season would have fans feeling a whole lot better entering Championship Week, but as the Heels stabilize, everyone around them on the bubble is hurting their causes.