North Carolina’s NCAA tournament inclusion makes absolutely no sense, and has a real conflict of interest

The North Carolina Tar Heels are legendary when it comes to March Madness. The championships, the unforgettable players, the incomparable Dean Smith — all part of what makes UNC one of the best-known programs in the country. On Sunday night the Heels were being talked about for all the wrong reasons, as North Carolina might lay claim to being the worst team to ever get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

Prior to the ACC tournament it was a forgone conclusion that UNC wouldn’t get to go dancing in 2025. The team finished 6th in the conference during regular season, their 22-13 record was not bid-worthy, and outside of a win over Dayton in November there really wasn’t a single non-conference win that was remotely impactful or significant.

While it’s true Carolina played EVERYONE in 2024-25, including non-conference powerhouses Florida, Auburn, Alabama, and Michigan State — they also lost every single one of these games.

Within days everything changed. UNC managed to beat Wake Forest in the NCAA tournament, and push Duke to the limit (albeit a Duke team missing Cooper Flagg due to injury). Those back-to-back performances pushed the Heels from being one of the first four out to the last four in, even though they never really deserved the honor of playing in the tournament.

Then the announcement came. Not only had the Tar Heels made the NCAA tournament, but they’re entering as a No. 11 seed. More worthy teams like West Virginia missed out so Carolina could get in, and it’s truly mind-boggling. Ever the most die-hard Heels fan whose heart is Carolina Blue knows they pulled a fast one over on the field. Looking head-to-head vs. WVU it’s abundantly clear some funny business was going on with the selection committee.

The variance in quad one wins is massive. This is supposed to be a huge determining factor in which teams get at-large bids, yet there is nothing about North Carolina’s season that indicates they belonged based on this metric. Yes, the Heels finished with a better conference record, but the ACC was very weak compared to the Big 12, which is putting Houston, Texas Tech, BYU, Arizona, and Iowa State into the tournament — while the ACC is solely being represented by Duke and UNC.

Naturally the decision is leading to A LOT of questions, especially considering this factoid:

Okay, so Bubba Cunningham isn’t allowed in the room to influence the decision, but if you’re on the selection committee and your chair’s team is on the bubble, how do you think people will vote compared to a team with no links to the group? It doesn’t need to be overt collusion to be wrong, when in at best it’s more like a social club West Virginia wasn’t invited to.

There’s also a factor of money at play here. North Carolina basketball is big business. West Virginia is not, comparatively speaking. The selection committee innately knows that UNC brings bigger TV ratings, and more traveling fans than West Virginia — which likely played a bigger role than the committee will publicly admit.

What they did say, however, was that North Carolina would have been out of the field if UAB had beaten Memphis.

In this scenario UAB would have won the AAC, Memphis would have gotten the at-large. However, the UAB loss meant that the door was open for North Carolina to be the least team in, whether they deserved it or not.

Unfortunately for West Verginia, they’ll be watching from home. The Tar Heels will enter, and likely get bounced early, because they simply can’t hang with a bulk of this field. We how UNC faired against top teams, and it wasn’t pretty.