UNC basketball has achieved a dubious feat.
It’s been one heck of a calendar year for the Tar Heels. North Carolina took out rival Duke and Coach K at Cameron Indoor and then sent the legendary coach packing with a drubbing in the Final Four. The Tar Heels didn’t win the title but came into the 2022 season with high expectations. They were the Preseason No. 1 team in the country.
UNC passed early tests but has dropped to a meager 5-4 after four consecutive losses, their latest coming at the hands of Virginia Tech. As such, the AP released the new Top 25 on Monday and the Heels were nowhere to be found.
This marked a historic feat for the program. But not, however, in a positive light. UNC became the first team to ever fall out of the AP poll after being preseason No. 1.
Matt Norlander of CBS Sports tweeted, “It’s official: Preseason No. 1 UNC is unranked after one month. Per Isaac Schade’s research, it is indeed historic. UNC is by far the earliest preseason 1 to fall out of the AP Top 25.”
Yikes. And the Tar Heels did handily beat everybody else’s dropoff. By a lot. As fellow insider Jeff Goodman said, it might be time to ask another question. He tweeted, “My bigger curiosity: Has a Preseason No. 1 ever not made the NCAA Tourney?”
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022