UNC Basketball: Andy Katz showing love to surging Tar Heels

Following a season-defining victory over the Duke Blue Devils, Andy Katz picks the UNC basketball program as his team of the week.

After their stunning defeat of the fourth-ranked Duke Blue Devils in Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the North Carolina Tar Heels have moved into Andy Katz’s final Power 36 rankings of the regular season. Katz, a longtime college basketball correspondent and writer for NCAA.com, has also named North Carolina his team of the week.

Those honors follow a week in which the Tar Heels knocked off the Syracuse Orange in overtime before beating the Blue Devils by 13 points despite the much-talked-about Coach K lovefest that featured 100 former Duke players in attendance and a raucous crowd hungry for a win over their bitter arch-rival.

On the same day that Katz moved the Tar Heels into the top 20 of his list, the Associated Press welcomed them back into their weekly top 25 poll after being unranked for more than three months. North Carolina began the season at No. 19 in the AP Top 25 but quickly fell out following losses to Purdue and Tennessee in the Hall of Fame Classic.

Now that the Tar Heels have solidified an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament, they’ll just be working on improving their seeding when they get to Brooklyn this week to compete in the ACC Tournament. Given that many are now projecting them as an 8 or 9-seed in the big dance, a couple of wins could really go a long way toward getting them in a more favorable position for a deep run in the NCAAs.

The Tar Heels tip-off at 9:30 p.m. EST on Thursday night against an opponent yet to be determined in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament.

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