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College basketball rankings: After struggling earlier this season, North Carolina is heating up again – CBS Sports
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North Carolina suffered a four-game losing streak in late November/early December that led to the Tar Heels eventually being removed from the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 — not to mention the Associated Press Top 25 poll and the Coaches poll.
They remain unranked in all three.
But let the record show that the Tar Heels have responded by going 6-1 in their past seven games with victories over Ohio State, Michigan and Wake Forest and the lone loss coming at Pitt. According to BartTorvik.com, UNC is performing like a top-30 team in this stretch, which is among the reasons the Tar Heels are only 4.5-point underdogs Tuesday night at Virginia.
It’s a big opportunity for UNC.
No school has ever gone from No. 1 in the preseason AP poll to unranked as quickly as the Tar Heels did this season, making them the sport’s biggest early disappointment. It was a bad look. But Tuesday’s road game against Virginia — the Cavaliers are No. 16 in Tuesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings — is an opportunity to show the rough start was nothing more than a rough start and definitely not a sign of how January, February and March will unfold. If the Tar Heels upset Virginia, they’ll improve to 4-5 in the first two quadrants with all five losses falling in Quadrant 1.
That’s not a great resume for a preseason No. 1, obviously. But it is respectable and could be the type of resume that returns North Carolina to Wednesday morning’s Top 25 And 1 (depending on what else happens around the country, of course).
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