What's at stake for North Carolina basketball in 2025 ACC Tournament

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2024-25 hasn’t been the season that Hubert Davis envisioned in Chapel Hill as North Carolina basketball has failed to meet expectations. The Tar Heels have just one quad 1 win and have let a number of opportunities slip through their fingers.

North Carolina still has hopes of getting into the NCAA Tournament thanks to a six-game winning streak that ended on Saturday in an 82-69 loss to Duke. However, it needs some more signature wins to add to its resume in order to convince the selection committee to put it in the field.

Davis and company had a chance to do just that on Saturday when they took a second-half lead over the No. 2-ranked team in the country. However, Duke immediately went on a huge run and put the game out of reach.

Now, North Carolina heads into the ACC Tournament needing a deep run to solidify its at-large case. Here’s a quick look at North Carolina’s tournament resume, where it stands now and what it needs to do in Charlotte to improve its stock.

North Carolina’s NCAA tournament resume entering ACC Tournament

North Carolina currently has a 20-12 overall record and finished the regular season with a 13-7 mark in ACC play. In a normal year, those numbers would easily be good enough to crack the field, but it isn’t quite good enough on the surface in one of the weakest years in the ACC’s history.

At the moment, only three ACC teams are locks to make the NCAA Tournament: Duke, Louisville and Clemson. North Carolina is a combined 0-4 against those three teams, so it needs to pick up at least one impressive win in the conference tournament.

Those issues against good teams also expand far beyond just the ACC. North Carolina is just 1-11 in Quad 1 games this season, repeatedly coming up short against the top competition against its schedule. No team got an at-large bid in last season’s tournament with anything close to that bad of a Quad 1 record, so that is another number that North Carolina must improve on. The only win in that category for the Tar Heels was a neutral-court win against UCLA back in December.

North Carolina’s metrics aren’t that bad, but they aren’t good enough to completely salvage a resume that has so many holes elsewhere. Hubert Davis’ squad is No. 40 in the NET ranking, which is notably above other bubble teams such as Xavier, Boise State, San Diego State, Texas and Oklahoma. However, those teams all have better wins than North Carolina and are above the Heels in most bracket projections as a result.

What Tar Heels need to do in conference tournament

All of these bubble teams will be searching for quality wins against other NCAA Tournament teams in their conference tournaments, and North Carolina needs at last one win over the top three teams in the ACC at minimum. Most projections currently have the Tar Heels on the outside looking in and the numbers back that up.

That’s where the problems come in. Quad 1 wins and impressive skins to put on your resume come much more frequently in some of the other leagues than they do in this year’s ACC.

Xavier is already into the Big East quarterfinals to take on top 25 Marquette. San Diego State and Boise State are on a collision course for a Mountain West quarterfinal that could serve as a de facto play-in game for the Big Dance. And don’t even get me started in the SEC, where both Texas and Oklahoma will get Quad 1 chances in the first round against Vanderbilt and Georgia for the chance to play more games against top teams.

North Carolina doesn’t have the same luxury. The Heels are the No. 5 seed in the conference tournament and will start their quest for the auto-bid on Wednesday against either Notre Dame or Pittsburgh. That game is pretty self-explanatory: lose it and you can start making plans for the NIT.

A win there would set up a bubble clash with Wake Forest in the quarterfinals on Thursday. The Demon Deacons are feisty, but a late-season slide has put them on the wrong side of the bubble similar to North Carolina. A win there would help UNC build some momentum, but it wouldn’t do much for its tournament case.

This is where the draw hurts the Tar Heels. Louisville or Clemson would be the preferred semifinal opponent for UNC, as the two opt them would provide a chance to get a great win over a top team, but they are also the more realistic options. Instead, top-seeded Duke likely awaits in the semifinals instead of the final.

North Carolina has played Duke tough for stretches this season, but the Blue Devils have repeatedly shown what puts them on a different tier not only from other teams in the ACC, but from almost everyone in the country. Their size and ability to defend the paint is unmatched across college basketball and is especially tough against a much smaller North Carolina team.

Duke has been steamrolling all comers in conference play, winning the outright regular season title with a 19-1 record in league play. All but two of those 19 wins came by double digits and 12 of them came by 20 or more points.

Unfortunately for this North Carolina basketball team, desperate times call for desperate measures. UNC absolutely must beat Duke in the semifinals to keep its NCAA tournament hopes alive and get to the title game in order to have an at-large case.

And at that point, Davis and company might as well just win the whole thing.

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