We’ve now seen the UNC men’s basketball team play two full games without star freshman Caleb Wilson, who broke his hand against Miami. We’ve even seen them play two games without Henri Veesaar, who apparently has been dealing with both the flu and a “lower body” injury.
The first of those two games — against Pitt — went okay, but the Panthers aren’t exactly good this season. The second of those games came on Tuesday night against NC State, and that didn’t go well. The Tar Heels took a 5-4 lead early
in the first half and then never led again, as the Wolfpack ended up blowing them out by 20+ points.
Veesaar’s status is still described by Hubert Davis as “day to day,” which means that he could be back by this weekend, but also means he could be out for a little while longer. Meanwhile for Wilson, recent reports are a little more optimistic about his return than after the initial injury, but a broken hand is not something you can just come back from willy nilly. You have to imagine if he does come back “soon,” there’s going to be some amount of pain he has to play through. That being said, it does seem like we will see him on the court again, even if he is hampered.
These factors and UNC’s recent games got me thinking: now that we’ve seen how this team looks like without, arguably, their two best players, and those two players may not be 100% down the stretch, what are your realistic expectations for the rest of this season?
There are other similar tools out there, but one interesting feature out there is BartTorvik.com’s Teamcast tool. It allows you to input results and see how winning or losing a game could impact a team’s NCAA Tournament résumé.
If UNC were to win out in the regular season — which, considering they still have games against Louisville, Clemson, and Duke, would be an impressive feat even if 100% healthy — they would end up with a #4 seed in the NCAA Tournament. On the other end, losing out would drop them down to a #9 seed. That doesn’t factor in the discretion that the selection committee has to factor in injuries, should Wilson not end up coming back. That being said, the reality is, unless they completely collapse, UNC should end up somewhere in the middle of those two spots.
When healthy, we’ve seen this team be able to compete with some of the best teams in the country. We’ve also seen them put up some duds. To me, the healthy team was one that could get hot and end up in the Final Four just as easily as they could be one that runs into the wrong double digit seed and loses in round one. Does that still hold if UNC remains battling injuries? If the Tar Heels are remain below full strength, will they just lose to any good team they run into? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
