Every year when the clock strikes midnight on December 31st and we enter January 1st and the new year, there is often time for reflection on what happened in the previous 365 days. However, it’s also a time to look forward and lay out your hopes and dreams for the 365 days to come.
The year 2026 has a chance to be a very good one for North Carolina Tar Heels’ athletics. You can probably list the Olympic/non-revenue sports that usually have contending teams and could very well again this year. Even
in the bigger revenue sports, we could see some good stuff going forward, but a theme for all of them is that they have something to prove.
The first part of the 2025-26 men’s basketball season couldn’t have gone much better for UNC. The Tar Heels lost just once in non-conference play, to what appears to be an also-very-good Michigan State team. Beyond that, they have wins over Kansas, Kentucky, which beyond just blue blood bragging rights, could end up being marquee ones on an NCAA Tournament résumé. They’ve generally handled business in an impressive and efficient way [Editor’s note: excepting yesterday’s second half against SMU].
However, the program in generally still has a lot to prove in the ACC slate and (hopefully) conference and NCAA Tournaments. In Hubert Davis’ tenure, they’ve only had one truly good season from start to end: 2023-24, when they earned a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Of course there was the championship game run in 2022, but that came on the heels of a regular season that was only good enough to get a #8 seed.
Coming into this season, there was a thought that Hubert Davis was on somewhat of a hot seat. Considering this start, it’s hard to imagine things going bad enough from here to cost him his job, but whether it’s a one year reprieve or something more than that remains to be seen. Based on what Carolina has done so far, it seems like proof of concept that Davis can put together a top ten-ish (or who knows, maybe better) roster, but this team still has to prove it. It would feel like a bummer if we’re sitting here on Selection Sunday watching UNC get a #6 seed or worse.
Over in women’s basketball, there’s no real threat of a hot seat for Courtney Banghart. After the program went through a fairly extended slump in the years before her hire, she has the Tar Heels as a fairly consistent top 15-20 program, making it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and regularly landing highly rated recruits.
However, at least so far, they haven’t been able to truly get on the level of the sport’s dominant powers. They’ve played South Carolina close a couple times, but games against the Gamecocks, UConn, and this season against UCLA and Texas haven’t gone their way, and have often been double digit losses.
I have faith that Banghart can get the program there, but it sure would be nice for them to take a tangible step forward. Again, it won’t (nor should it) cost her the job if UNC loses in the Sweet 16 or earlier, but going further than that would represent some proof of concept that they’re nearing the elite of women’s basketball.
And then there’s football…
I think anyone with eyes who was following what happened in 2025 knows what the Tar Heel football program has to prove in 2026. Year one of the grand Bill Belichick experiment led to a 4-8 season and lots of jokes at UNC’s expense. Obviously, there’s a metric ton that Belichick and company have to prove next season.
Unlike the other two though, with football I have some doubts of how much can be proven. The 2025 roster appears to have been a complete miscalculation of player evaluation. General manager Mike Lombardi has said they would focus on recruiting and development in the future. A bit of an issue there is that most true freshman football players aren’t typically ready to play immediately. Therefore, if they actually want to have a good record in 2026, they’re probably going to have to rely on the current roster/transfers again — and unless they decided to go Texas Tech mode and just drop a bunch of bags on the biggest, best, and meanest players in the portal, I’m not sure how much improvement can be made. I wouldn’t complain if I am proven wrong, but they emphatically have to prove it.
We quite literally have a year to get the answers to many of these questions, so there’s plenty of time to figure it out, but 2026 could be an interesting year for many of the UNC sports programs.
