The fourth year of the Hubert Davis era in Chapel Hill has been a success to date, with the North Carolina Tar Heels rolling to a 25-6 record and a 17-3 mark in Atlantic Coast Conference play. That allowed the Heels to take home their first outright conference crown in seven years.
It also makes for a lot of excitement for UNC fans, especially today, the first day of legal mobile North Carolina sports betting.
Fresh off an 84-79 win in Durham over Duke, UNC enters this week’s festivities in Washington D.C. looking to knock off either the eighth-seeded Virginia Tech Hokies or the No. 9 Florida State Seminoles. Both teams lost to UNC during the regular season.
Oddsmakers at ESPN BET North Carolina list UNC as the co-favorite with Duke to win this year’s ACC Tournament at +180. The Tar Heels have the seventh-best national championship odds at +1800.
You can find more North Carolina betting odds here are BetCarolina.com.
To get a better look at what March Madness means for UNC, BetCarolina.com used Sports-Reference.com to examine the past 10 Tar Heels teams that won the ACC regular season outright. We wanted to see how UNC historically performs after winning the conference regular season. Based on this data, UNC has been the champions of the NCAA Tournament 40% of the years.
NCAA Tournament Results When UNC Wins ACC Reg. Season Title
Note: Results are the % of times UNC landed in each outcome (Champion, Elite Eight, Final Four)
This year, UNC will look to continue the ACC’s long line of regular season success stories come March Madness, with the Tar Heels winning the ACC’s regular season crown 11 times between 2000 and 2024, seven outright. In the years of those seven outright titles, UNC has reached the championship game four times.
Of those four title game appearances, UNC wound up winning it all three times (2005, 2009 and 2017). The Tar Heels came up short in 2016 against Villanova (UNC also lost in the title game to Kansas in 2022 after winning a share of the ACC regular season title).
BetMGM North Carolina gives UNC +1800 odds to win the NCAA Tournament, sixth overall behind favorite UConn (+500).
UNC’s NCAA Tournament Results
How North Carolina has performed in the NCAA Tournament after winning the outright ACC regular season title.
Breaking Down UNC Data
During the last 10 times that UNC won the ACC’s regular season crown outright, the Tar Heels eventually fell in the Elite Eight four times, doing so in 1987 (to Syracuse), 1988 (to Arizona), 2011 (to Kentucky) and 2012 (to Kansas).
The Tar Heels have fallen in the Final Four once, to Kansas in 2008. UNC has lost the title game once as an outright ACC regular season champ (to Villanova in 2016) and has gone on to win it all in 1993, 2005, 2009 and 2017 after winning its conference regular season crown.
This year, UNC will look to carry that tradition forward in the 2024 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, though its next title quest will be in the Nation’s Capital this weekend as the 2024 ACC Tournament tips off from Capital One Arena on Tuesday.
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