UNC Sets Sights on Final Four After Surviving Historic Collapse vs. No. 1 Baylor

R.J. Davis might be able to see New Orleans through those three goggles.Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Throughout the 2021-22 men’s college basketball season, there were two distinctly different versions of the North Carolina Tar Heels.

“Good Carolina” was invested on defense, shared the ball well on offense, hit open threes and ended up smoking Michigan by 21, blowing out Virginia twice and making a mockery of Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor. “Good Carolina” looked like a serious threat to win a national championship.

Then there was “Bad Carolina,” which did, well, none of those things.

Opponents benefited from wide-open threes against a lackadaisical defense. The ball just kind of stuck on offense. Players on “Bad Carolina” genuinely didn’t even seem to enjoy being on the floor with one another. And when “Bad Carolina” showed up, it lost by 29 to Kentucky, got stomped by Miami and Wake Forest and even lost a home game to a terrible Pittsburgh team.

For all the talk about Alabama, Rutgers, Michigan, Memphis and others being the types of teams that could win it all just as easily as they could get trounced in the first round, North Carolina is actually the team with neither a floor nor a ceiling, depending on which version of that team decides to show up.

Well, I shouldn’t say there’s no ceiling for UNC, because it’s clear “the ceiling is the roof,” just like it was when the Tar Heels won it all in 2017.

And in Saturday’s 93-86 overtime win over No. 1 seed Baylor, we saw both the best of Carolina and the worst of Carolina.

The best was a force of nature that reeled off a 14-2 run in the span of three minutes early in the first half and that gradually opened up a 25-point lead by midway through the second half.

Less than 48 hours after handing Marquette the most lopsided No. 8 vs. No. 9 blowout in tournament history, “Good Carolina” had all of us looking up the biggest blowout loss by a No. 1 seed in the second round. (If you’re wondering, it was a 16-point victory by No. 8 Auburn against No. 1 St. John’s in 1986, from which it seems the Johnnies have spent 35 years trying to recover.)

As was the case during Brady Manek’s four years with Oklahoma, Baylor often looked helpless in its attempt to slow down the stretch 4, who had 26 points by the time UNC pulled ahead 67-42. While Manek scored at will, RJ Davis was also red hot and Armando Bacot could not be stopped on the glass.

Even though Caleb Love had a horrendous game (five points, two assists, six turnovers, five fouls), and even though Baylor is a very good team that was worthy of the fourth overall No. 1 seed, the Heels ran rampant and got whatever they wanted for the first 29 minutes.

But after a controversial flagrant-2 elbow that resulted in Manek’s ejection, the worst of Carolina reared its ugly head.

North Carolina’s Brady ManekTom Pennington/Getty Images

It’s at this point that I would like to state for the record I have been a Duke fan for my entire life. The intensity of that fandom has waned drastically in my decade of covering this sport with impartiality, but there will always be a part of me that considers it a good day when Duke wins and/or UNC loses. And I wanted to mention that so that you know full well there is not a drop of Carolina blue in my blood when I say that the officiating played a colossal role in the rearing of that ugly head.

The flagrant-2 on Manek was the major turning point, but there were about a dozen other controversial or downright indefensible calls during the final 10 minutes of regulation, all of which went against UNC. There were several bad block/charge decisions. Ticky-tack fouls were called on one end, while hacks were ignored on the other. And the five-second count on a UNC inbounds play was more like 2.5 seconds.

All the credit in the world goes to Baylor for not throwing in the towel, and plenty of blame needs to fall on the Tar Heels for repeatedly looking like they had never faced a full-court press in their lives, as well as for repeatedly dribbling into double-teams in a corner of the court. But there is no question that a one-sided whistle contributed to the Bears closing out regulation on a 38-13 run.

That said, against all odds, “Good Carolina” showed back up and displayed incredible resilience to rally for the overtime victory.

Manek and Love were both already out of the game, and Bacot had been playing with four fouls for the final five minutes of regulation. Considering the Heels rarely get anything more than a few minutes and maybe a couple of points from their bench—non-starters combined for 14 minutes, two points and one rebound in the regular-season finale against Duke—both the momentum of the game and the respective roster situations heading into the extra five minutes felt like a massive advantage for the Bears.

(Thankfully I didn’t bet on it, but I saw the live moneyline on Baylor at -230—bet $230 to win $100—heading into overtime. Not as high as I thought it would be, but those final five minutes were most certainly not a coin flip in the eyes of Vegas.)

Yet, the Heels dug deep, with reserves Dontrez Styles and Justin McKoy each making huge plays late in the overtime victory over the reigning national champions.

North Carolina’s Leaky BlackRon Jenkins/Getty Images

In one afternoon, North Carolina doled out one of the most impressive beatdowns we’ve ever seen, suffered what simply has to have been the worst 11-minute, second-half collapse in the history of the NCAA tournament and then showed a lot of grit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

That’s par for the course if you’ve been watching the Tar Heels over the past four months, am I right? You just never know what you’re going to get from this team from one media timeout to the next.

Still, Manek has been consistently excellent as of late, scoring at least 20 points in five of his last six games as the Heels have emerged as a serious threat. Getting him back on the court for the Sweet 16 should be the catalyst this team needs to win a region where No. 1 Baylor and No. 2 Kentucky have already bitten the dust.

At this point, North Carolina isn’t just a candidate to reach the Final Four.

This team may well need to be considered the favorite to win the East.

During the 25-point blowout portion of the afternoon, a lot of folks on Twitter were comparing this No. 8 seed to the Kentucky team that made it to the national championship game from the same starting spot in 2014. With five freshmen in the starting lineup for most of the year, that Wildcats team spent a lot of time on the bubble and didn’t really start to hit its stride until the week of Selection Sunday.

That’s a great comparison, but why even look at a different blue-blood program when North Carolina made it to the Final Four as a No. 8 seed in 2000?

Much like this year’s team, those Heels had a handful of impressive blowout wins and a bunch of puzzling no-show losses before picking the most important time of year to start giving consistent, quality effort on defense. And if this team continues to defend like it did against Marquette and like it did against Baylor before losing Manek, let’s just say the Final Four isn’t exactly the ceiling.

UNC could go to New Orleans and win the whole damn thing.

For the Heels’ sake, though, let’s hope they never see Kipp Kissinger and the rest of Saturday’s officiating crew ever again.

Kerry Miller covers men’s college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.