CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — It's been a record breaking year for the North Carolina Tar Heels, and not in a good way.
After starting the season ranked number one in the country, Hubert Davis' club was out of the top 25 entirely by Week 5 - the earliest a preseason number one has been unranked in the poll's history.
Then, as if that wasn't a dubious enough distinction, North Carolina went just 11-9 in a down year of ACC play and fell to Virginia in the second round of the conference tournament - with most believing they will not be extended a bid on Selection Sunday ahead of the NCAA Tournament.
If that holds, they will be the first preseason number one team to not make the big dance since the field expanded to 64 teams, another record no one in Chapel Hill wants to attach to this program.
Locked on College Basketball hosts Andy Patton and Isaac Schade discussed UNC's issues this season and how high expectations were after the deep March run last year - when perhaps they shouldn't have been.
"It's reframing how a lot of people are looking at North Carolina," Patton said. "They came in with these high expectations and they didn't meet those expectations in the regular season...when you remove everything else this team has done [outside of the national championship run] these last two seasons, they are a middling Power-5 team. That's where they are at."
North Carolina peaked at No. 18 in the AP Poll in the 2021-22 season, finishing 15-5 in the ACC play and going on a tremendous run through the NCAA Tournament - starting as an eight seed and upsetting Baylor and Duke on their way to a national championship appearance, which resulted in a loss to Kansas.
The Tar Heels returned four of their five starters from that runner-up squad, replacing sharpshooting big man Brady Manek with a similar player in Northwestern transfer Pete Nance. With depth options like Leaky Black and Puff Johnson returning, and a top recruiting class, it's not hard to see why Davis' team was given so much love in the preseason.
But Nance and big man Armando Bacot didn't gel as well on the court as Bacot and Manek did, and questionable shot selection throughout the season by RJ Davis and Caleb Love led to this team's downfall.
Whether this team sneaks in as a play-in game, ends up in the NIT, or heads into the offseason remains to be seen, but there is no question this program has some work to do to get back to the glory days under Davis.