North Carolina Makes the NCAA Tournament Field; Four ACC Teams In

UAB's loss to Memphis in AAC title game puts Tar Heels in. Lane-violator Jae’Lyn Withers may be the most relieved player in the country

North Carolina head coach Hubert Davis got the Tar Heels to the Fial Four last year / Bob Donnan-Imagn Images

Virtually every reliable NCAA tournament projection on Sunday morning predicted that North Carolina would not make the NCAA tournament field.  ESPN, Fox, CBS Sports and most others all had North Carolina being left out.

The Saturday loss to Duke in the ACC tournament semifinals, when a lane violation by the Tar Heels’ Jae’Lyn Withers with 4.1 seconds left negated what would have been a game-tying free throw, seemed to be the nail in UNC’s NCAA tournament coffin.

But when the field was officially revealed on Sunday, there was North Carolina as a No. 11 seed in the South, scheduled to face another No. 11 seed San Diego State, in a play-in game on Wednesday.

The Tar Heels reportedly were the very last at-large team to make the field, and Keith Gill, the deputy chair of the selection comittee, said that if UAB had defeated Memphis in Sunday's championship game of the Amertican Athletic Conference tourament, North Carolina would not have made the NCAA tourament field.

A UAB win would have given the Blazers an automatic bid while Memphis would still have received an at-large berth. Instead Memphis won Sunday's game and got the only berth from its coference since UAB did not have the resume to warrant a at-large berth. That left one at-large berth available and North Carolina was next in line despite having a 1-12 record agaist Quad 1 opponents.

North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunnigham is the chairman of the NCAA tournament selection committee, which may raise some eyebrows from the teams that were not selected. But when a team represented by one of the committee members is being discussed, that member must leave the room and have no influence on that discussion.

Duke (No. 1 seed in the East), Clemson (No. 5 seed in the Midwest), Louisville (No. 8 seed in the South) are the other ACC teams in the NCAA Tournament, while Wake Forest and SMU were left out.

The ACC’s four NCAA teams are still the conference’s fewest berths in 12 years, since it got just four in 2013.

But most were expecting the ACC to get just three NCAA teams, which would have been the conference’s fewest in 25 years, when it had just nine members in 2000, half the umber of members what it has now.

The ACC's four bids pales in comparison to the SEC, which set a record with 14 teams getting in, but it's one better than expected.