Joe Lunardi's Final NCAA Tournament Prediction For North Carolina

03/16/2025 11:18 AM

It's going to be an extremely tense Selection Sunday for Hubert Davis and the North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball program.

The Tar Heels are one of the biggest bubble teams heading into the Selection Show on Sunday night. North Carolina is 22-13 on the season, 13-7 in the ACC. While those records are typically strong enough to earn an NCAA Tournament bid, the ACC was a very bad conference this year. UNC beat up on a lot of bad teams and has just one Quad 1 win on its resume. 

UNC had a chance to shore up an NCAA Tournament bid against Duke, playing without Cooper Flagg, on Friday night. However, the Tar Heels lost a close one. Many believe that UNC's NCAA Tournament chances ended with that loss on Friday night.

But where do things stand with longtime ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi? The college basketball guru released his new NCAA Tournament projection on Sunday morning, shortly after 2 a.m. E.T.

It's not looking good for the Tar Heels.

Lunardi has North Carolina as his second team OUT of the field on Sunday morning. Boise State is the first team out, according to Lunardi. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt, San Diego State, Xavier and Indiana are the last four teams in the field.

There are three conference tournament title games on Sunday, with Florida taking on Tennessee in the SEC, Memphis playing UAB in the American and Michigan facing Wisconsin in the Big Ten.

UAB is the only bid stealer in that group. Bubble team fans have to be rooting for Memphis in that one.

Lunardi doesn't see a path into the field for North Carolina right now.

"[Boise State] will probably drop out of the field. The other will be the automatic bid recipient. So we're going to see the bubble actually move up instead of down, for a change," Lunardi said on Saturday night. "So that brings those in the first four out group, back into play. But we've also seen what could happen if a Memphis were to lose, or if a VCU were to lose, both were challenged today, Memphis especially. So we could still have other bid thieves. I would not want to be Carolina or Texas overnight."

You can view Lunardi's final NCAA Tournament bracket projection here.