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College basketball rankings: Indiana rises into top 10 of Top 25 And 1 as North Carolina continues to slide – CBS Sports
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Armando Bacot entered the Indiana game with an injured ankle and exited it with an injured shoulder. So perhaps that’s the best explanation for why the North Carolina star was outplayed by fellow All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis late Wednesday. Either way, it was a disappointing individual performance that contributed to another disappointing team performance and resulted in a 77-65 loss at IU that extended the Tar Heels’ losing streak to three games.
“The difference was Trayce Jackson-Davis,” said UNC’s second-year coach Hubert Davis, who watched Jackson-Davis finish with 21 points, 10 rebounds and four assists, while Bacot was held to 12 points, 10 rebounds and zero assists. “[The Hoosiers} have a player that they can run offense through, that can generate points on every possession, and, as of right now, we don’t have that. We don’t have that in the post.”
As I wrote Wednesday morning, it’s not time to hit the panic button on North Carolina quite yet because a lot of us did that last winter and ended up looking foolish when the Tar Heels eventually evolved into one of the nation’s best teams. I’m not going to make that mistake again. However, there’s no denying UNC is off to a rough start despite returning four starters from last season’s team that went 11-1 in a late 12-game stretch and advanced to the title game of the 2022 NCAA Tournament. The Tar Heels are now 5-3 this season with zero notable wins and losses to Indiana, Alabama and Iowa State. On Wednesday, they trailed Indiana by as many as 15 points and never got closer than six in the second half of a lopsided contest that provided the Hoosiers with their first win of the season over a team ranked in the top 30 at KenPom.com. That’s among the reasons Indiana is up to No. 7, and North Carolina is down to No. 25, in Thursday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings.
Things don’t get much easier for UNC this weekend. Up next for the Tar Heels’ is Sunday’s ACC opener at Virginia Tech. That’s another road game against a top-40 KenPom team that could result in a fourth straight loss and then possibly lead to the removal of North Carolina from the Associated Press Top 25 poll on Monday despite the fact that the Tar Heels were No. 1 in that poll just last week.
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