North Carolina Tar Heels: Announcing the Final Four 20 Bracket

The North Carolina Tar Heels are headed to their twentieth Final Four. Which of those teams would you want?

The North Carolina Tar Heels are in the Final Four again. This makes twenty times that the team has made it to what has become College Basketball’s big event outside of UConn Women’s Basketball. They made it five times with Roy Williams, twice with Bill Guthridge, eleven times with Dean Smith, and once each with Frank Maguire and Ben Carnevale.

The natural question becomes which of these teams is best? One might easily point to the national champion teams as the best of the bunch, but would they have fared in matchups against some of the near misses? Will coaching come into play? Play styles or evolution of the game? Over the next few days, and probably beyond the Final Four itself, let’s look to see who could win a bracket full of these teams.

The bracket will be a twenty team bracket with four play-in games. Seedings will be handled thusly: champions will be seeded first, championship game losers seed next, and teams that simply made the Final Four but got no further will be last. The 2017 team will be seeded at the bottom of the bracket as the wild card. We don’t know how they will finish yet.

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So the seeds will go as follows-

1. 1957 – undefeated team gets precedence
2. 1982 – legend over substance? Hard to put Michael Jordan, James Worthy, and Sam Perkins further down
3. 2009 – a dominant performance over Michigan State in the title
4. 2005 – still the most interesting team to play under Roy Williams
5. 1993 – The blue collar bunch, needed Chris Webber to seal title

Then comes the championship participants who came short

1. 1977 – the year most thought would be Smith’s first title
2. 1981 – followed by this other team just a year away from Smith’s first title
3. 2016 – After a miraculous Marcus Paige shot, done in by Nate Britt’s friend
4. 1946 – The first Carolina team to make a National final
5. 1968 – Smith’s first shot at a National final

Then filling out with the Final Four achievers who went no further

1. 1998 – The Antawn Jamison– Vince Carter– Ed Cota team + Brendan Haywood
2. 1995 – The Jerry Stackhouse– Rasheed Wallace team with that duo in the spotlight

(the remaining teams are in play-in games)

1. 1972 – Bob McAdoo and George Karl
2. 1997 – Smith’s last ride
3. 1969 – Charlie Scott meets Purdue
4. 1991 – Smith versus…Roy Williams
5. 1967 – Smith’s first Final Four
6. 2000 – They snuck in the NCAA but gave Guthridge his second Final Four in his three years
7. 2008 – I have bad memories of this performance versus Kansas
8. 2017 – We just don’t know yet, but we can’t leave them out

So there are the rankings, so I will update the matchups by doing about one or maybe two a day. I will look to see if there are any simulators out there, but if not then it will be up to statistics and matchups. I will not play favorites. Everyone loves the 1982 team and I have a personal connection to the 2005 team, but this going to be basketball based.