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ACC Tournament won’t be a cocktail party for North Carolina after a wasted opportunity against Duke
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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Roy Williams was never a fan of the ACC Tournament.
North Carolina’s retired Hall of Fame coach thought so little of his conference’s annual postseason event that he once referred to it as “nothing more than a great cocktail party.”
It might have been back in the day.
Back when the Tar Heels were more concerned with where they’d be going to play in the NCAA Tournament than if they’d be invited to college basketball’s big dance.
But that’s not the case this year.
The schmoozing. The fun and games. That’s for others this time around. Hubert Davis’ team has far too much work to do when it gets to Charlotte next week for such trivial matters.
UNC might not have to run the table and cut down the ACC Tournament nets as its rival NC State did a year ago. But with the Tar Heels’ postseason fate squarely on the line and their bubble dangerously close to bursting, it’s likely going to take a trip to next Saturday’s championship game to keep their realistic NCAA hopes alive.
Anything less and the only cocktails being served around Chapel Hill on Selection Sunday will be the kind used to douse the pain of missing out on March Madness for the second time in 3 seasons.
UNC could have removed much of that burden from its collective shoulders on Saturday by beating arch-rival – and soon-to-be No. 1 – Duke at Smith Center.
And for a while, it looked as if it might be possible.
With star guard RJ Davis re-discovering the shooting touch that helped earn him the ACC’s Player of the Year award in 2024 in his final home appearance, the Tar Heels roared back from a double-digit first-half deficit to take a 7-point lead with 15:44 remaining.
But just as visions of a desperately-needed Quad 1 victory began dancing in the heads of the raucous sellout crowd, the Blue Devils responded to the challenge by re-establishing the dominance they showed in the previous meeting at Cameron last month to pull away for an 82-69 victory that put UNC right back into bubble trouble.
“You’re really in control of two things. How you react and how you respond,” Hubert Davis said afterward. “I’ve been proud of how this team has reacted and responded all year, specifically over the last month staying connected and staying the course. I don’t think that’s going to change at all. We’ll regroup and be ready to go in practice and our play will be on point on Wednesday.”
As the No. 5 seed, the Tar Heels will begin their ACC Tournament on Wednesday against either 12th-seeded Notre Dame and conference scoring champion Markus Burton or No. 13 Pittsburgh. A win would earn them a quarterfinal date against fourth-seeded Wake Forest.
Neither game will do anything to help their NCAA chances other than to keep them on life support for another day.
Even with 20 wins and a respectable enough NET ranking of 42, their resume has a glaring blemish only a potential rematch with Duke in the ACC semifinal in Charlotte can help mask.
UNC is now 1-10 in Quad 1 opportunities, with the only victory coming against UCLA at Madison Square Garden way back on Dec. 21. That’s a big deal. Because since the current metrics were adopted in 2018-19, only 1 team – Drake in 2021 – has earned an at-large NCAA bid with only a single Quad 1 win.
But that’s still way too far in the future for the Tar Heels to start thinking about yet.
“We just have to stay together,” freshman forward Drake Powell said. “Going into the ACC Tournament, we’re 0-0 so whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter.”
Actually, though, in this case, it does.
To have any shot at getting to Friday for a chance at that elusive Quad 1 victory, the Tar Heels are going to have to pack up the momentum they built during the 6-game winning streak that was snapped on Saturday and bring it with them to Charlotte.
As they showed by outscoring the Blue Devils 35-13 during a 12-minute stretch surrounding halftime – albeit with Duke star Cooper Flagg on the bench with foul trouble for most of it – they have the ability to stay on even terms with the best team in the country when they defend, rebound and with some offensive cohesiveness.
“Our job and our responsibility is whomever we play, to be prepared to play our best game on Wednesday,” Hubert Davis said. “If we play well enough, we get to play on Thursday and our preparation will be focused on that. You can only control what you can control.”
The problem for Davis and his Tar Heels is that those controllable opportunities are rapidly dwindling as they head to Charlotte this week.
And it won’t be for a cocktail party.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
