Jay Bilas reacting to the NCAA Tournament field Photo Credit: ESPN
College BasketballESPNBy Reice Shipley on

The North Carolina Tar Heels receiving a bid into the 2025 NCAA Tournament was undoubtedly the most shocking thing to come from the CBS Selection Show on Sunday night. But for some, the coverage after the fact from ESPN college basketball analysts Jay Bilas and Jay Williams was even more egregious.

North Carolina, who saw their ACC Tournament run end at the hands of Duke on Friday night, struggled to separate themselves from the rest of what was an extremely top-heavy ACC Conference throughout the season, losing against every other in-conference NCAA Tournament team on their schedule.

Despite this, it was North Carolina who received the final at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament, receiving the opportunity to play in a First Four matchup against fellow 11-seed San Diego State in the South Region.

For reference of just how unpopular it was for North Carolina to receive an NCAA Tournament bid, Matt Schick of The Schick & Nick Show on ESPN Radio outlined in a post on X how of the 111 recognized bracketologists who released their official NCAA Tournament fields to The Bracket Matrix Project ahead of the selection show, just 27 of them had North Carolina making the NCAA Tournament field.

Meanwhile, West Virginia, who did not make the field, was in the field on all 111 bracketologists’ brackets.

Naturally, this was a point of discussion on ESPN’s Bracketology Special directly after the CBS Selection Show to break down the NCAA Tournament field. Right away, Jay Williams made it known that he was not in favor of North Carolina getting a bid over West Virginia.

“To me guys, that’s the biggest takeaway from this whole thing,” said Williams. “For North Carolina, I don’t know how they made the tournament and West Virginia didn’t make the tournament. 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 6 Quad-One wins. They beat Iowa State, they beat Gonzaga when Gonzaga was number three in the country. I just feel like West Virginia was way more deserving of being in the Tournament than North Carolina.”

Nothing that Williams said here was incorrect. On paper, West Virginia does indeed have a better resume than North Carolina in the eyes of most, based on their drastic edge in Quad-One victories. However, given the fact that Williams is, of course, a proud Duke alum, there were plenty of North Carolina fans who accused Williams of being biased against the Tar Heels.

Meanwhile, Jay Bilas wasn’t particularly interested in arguing one way or the other regarding UNC getting the final spot in the field, outlining how he believes arguing over the final at-large team in the field.

“I’m not as worked up about the end of the line this year as I have been in past years,” said Bilas. “North Carolina getting in… We spend too much time talking about the 30th-best team in the country or 35th-best team in the country.”

In some ways, Bilas does have a point. When you find yourself on the bubble, you leave your fate in the hands of the Selection Committee for better or worse. Even a team like West Virginia, who did look like a tournament team for most of the season, certainly could have done more to not find themselves in the position to be let down.

Still, Bilas downplaying the importance of an NCAA Tournament bid also wasn’t overly well-received. Some believed that Bilas was being an ACC homer, while others thought that Bilas simply should have a better understanding of how important it is for both coaches and programs as a whole to get into the big dance.

Only time will tell whether North Carolina can make the most of the opportunity they now have. But clearly, the vast majority of the college basketball world seems to believe that they should be counting their lucky stars that they find themselves in the field.

About Reice Shipley

Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.

View all posts by Reice Shipley