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Jay Bilas Had Good Reason for Not Getting Mad About UNC Getting in to NCAA Tournament
Jay Bilas is not going to worry about the teams that barely missed the NCAA tournament and who got in instead of them.
On Sunday after the NCAA tournament field was announced, ESPN's Jay Williams echoed the complaints of many, lamenting that North Carolina was included in the field. Bilas shut that conversation down quickly.
"To me guys, that's my biggest takeaway from this whole thing, is for North Carolina. I don't know how they made the tournament and West Virginia didn't make the tournament," Williams said. "North Carolina had 11 opportunities to play against teams in the field, they only won one of those on a neutral court in December. They have four losses to teams that didn't make the tournament... I just feel like West Virginia is way more deserving to be in the tournament than North Carolina."
Bilas didn't want to play along.
"I'm not as worked up about the end of the line this year as I have been in past years," Bilas said. "We spend too much time talking about the 30th-best team in the country or the 35th-best team in the country."
Jay Williams: "I don't know how [UNC] made the tournament and West Virginia didn't..."
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 16, 2025
Jay Bilas: "I'm not as worked up about the end of the line this year... We spend too much time talking about the 30th-best team in the country or 35th-best team in the country." #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/ViBNhyAYQ2
That's a completely fair stance. While other teams certainly have solid arguments to make about making the tournament over North Carolina, all of them had opportunities to solidify their spots in the field and failed.
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Ryan Phillips is a senior writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has worked in digital media since 2009, spending eight years at The Big Lead before joining SI in 2024. Phillips also co-hosts The Assembly Call Podcast about Indiana Hoosiers basketball and previously worked at Bleacher Report. He is a proud San Diego native and a graduate of Indiana University’s journalism program.