Breaking News: Tar Heels Suddenly Have Opportunity to Make…
Tar Heels from North Carolina
The UNC basketball team leads the league standings by themselves after defeating unranked foe NC State (11-4, 3-1 ACC) 67-54 on the road on Wednesday night. In addition, the No. 7 Tar Heels (12-3, 4-0 ACC) are poised to move up a few points in the Associated Press Top 25 Poll the next week as a result of many defeats in the top five this week.
Since Monday’s most recent poll announcement, No. 1 Purdue, No. 2 Houston, No. 3 Kansas, and No. 5 Tennessee have all dropped out.
Consequently, if UNC triumphs over Syracuse (11-4, 2-2 ACC) at the Smith Center on Saturday at 12:00 ET (ESPN), Hubert Davis’ third group of Tar Heels will currently be riding a five-game winning streak winning streak despite only one of those outings taking place at home, may well leapfrog all four of those squads
No. 4 UConn welcomes unranked Georgetown on Sunday, while No. 6 Kentucky travels to play unranked Texas A&M on Saturday.
While it seems improbable that either the Huskies or the Wildcats would struggle in those games, this week’s run of shock victories over teams ranked in the top 25 (eight in all until Wednesday night) cautions against discounting that possibility completely.
One would believe that UNC basketball might have a chance to rank No. 1 the following week if Kentucky and UConn somehow fall this weekend. Of course, this is presuming the Tar Heels take care of business against the Orange. After all, very few teams who suffered a setback the week before are awarded that honor.
Since its three-week reign as the top-ranked team in the opening month of the 2022–2023 season, when it memorably dropped four games in a row and missed out on an NCAA Tournament berth, UNC has not been ranked.