Having wrapped up a 31-18 regular season back on April 26th, the North Carolina Tar Heels’ softball team is set to begin their ACC Tournament on Wednesday against Clemson. Despite the overall winning record, Carolina went just 9-15 in conference play, which leaves them at a bit of a disadvantage going into the ACC Tournament — and possibly the NCAA Tournament.
As a result of that 9-15 record, the Tar Heels ended up as the #10 seed in the 12-team tournament this week, which will be held in at Virginia’s
stadium in Charlottesville. Their seed means that UNC would have to run a four-games-in-four-days gauntlet in order to take home the conference title. Adding to that, if they faced the highest possible seed in every round, that would require them to beat nationally ranked Duke, Virginia Tech, and Florida State squads. Considering that they went a combined 1-8 against those teams during the regular season, having to potentially beat them back to back to back would be a very tough feat.
That leaves us with the other issue: the Tar Heels may very well need a good run in the tournament this week in order to get into the NCAA Tournament. At least according to On3’s Softball America, Carolina was among the “first four out” in their most recent bracketology. The reason cited for being forecasted on the wrong side of the bubble was their lack of success against ranked opposition. Against teams that were ranked at the time of the respective games, UNC went just 2-16. One win came against Duke and the other against Virginia, who aren’t as highly ranked as they were at the time of that win. Besides that, they have six further wins against projected tournament teams, but all of those are against one-bid league teams.
The good news is that the ACC is one of the better conferences, and there will be opportunities for victories to add to the NCAA Tournament résumé. However, UNC also has to take those chances, and so far this season they haven’t really been able to do that.
Even if Carolina can’t get the wins they need to take them into the NCAA Tournament, the program overall still seems headed in a better direction under third year coach Megan Smith Lyon. They made the tournament last year in her second season, having missed the previous four. That being said, here’s to hoping they can pull of something this week.
