2025 NCAA Tournament: Jay Williams rips decision to put North Carolina in bracket

One of the biggest surprises in Sunday’s 2025 NCAA Tournament bracket reveal was when North Carolina’s name showed up. The Tar Heels are heading to the First Four despite questions about their resume as a tournament team.

UNC was the last team in the field and will be a No. 11 seed if it wins in Dayton. The Tar Heels will take on San Diego State for a spot in the first round later this week.

However, ESPN’s Jay Williams wondered just how deserving Carolina was to make it. He pointed out issues with the Tar Heels’ resume, comparing it to that of West Virginia.

“To me, that’s my biggest takeaway from this whole thing is for North Carolina, I don’t know how they made the tournament and West Virginia didn’t make the tournament,” Williams said. “North Carolina had 11 opportunities to play against teams in the field. They only won one of those on a neutral court in December.

“They have four losses to teams that didn’t make the tournament. And you talk about a team like West Virginia who had six Quad 1 wins, they beat Iowa State, they beat Gonzaga when Gonzaga was No. 3 in the country. It [seems] like West Virginia is much more deserving to be in the tournament than North Carolina.”

North Carolina finished the regular season ranked No. 36 in the NET rankings. However, the Tar Heels only have one Quadrant 1 victory, and it came against UCLA in the early part of the non-conference slate. West Virginia, meanwhile, is No. 51 in the NET with a 6-10 record in Q1 games. The Mountaineers went 4-3 in Q2 games and, therefore, became the first team out of the 2025 NCAA Tournament field.

But UNC fared well in Quadrant 2 games, finishing with a perfect 8-0 record in those matchups. While AD Bubba Cunningham – the chair of the NCAA selection committee – was not in the room for discussions about the Tar Heels, vice chair Keith Gill said they came in as the last team in the field. He also pointed out if UAB won the American Athletic Conference tournament, UNC would have finished as the first team out of the 2025 NCAA tournament.

“Saturday night, we took our final vote and voted in four teams in the field on Saturday night and we had a contingency vote,” Gill said. “And, the contingency vote? That was the last team in the field. It was based on Memphis and UAB. If Memphis won that game then that was going to free up a spot in the tournament and that was going to be North Carolina. If UAB had won then Memphis was going to be in the tournament, UAB would have been in the tournament, and North Carolina would have been the First Team Out. And so that process played out today. Memphis won and that put North Carolina in the field.”