Best/Worst 4 Year Stretches in UNC Program History

Looking back at my four years attending North Carolina, it felt that I got fairly unlucky over the exact four year stretch I was there with respect to the men's basketball team's success, overlapping with the 2012 to 2015 NCAA tournaments. Three years prior, we won a title in 2009, and the the year after I left we lost in the championship game (winning another title the year after that). The furthest we advanced was the Elite Eight in 2012, so if my college career had been shifted by three years in either direction, I would have been there for a title.

I looked back to determine how low of a four year stretch my college career oversaw. While critical metrics like win percentage or how often we beat Dook matter a lot, the barometer I'll be using is how much success the teams had in the NCAA tournament. To calculate this, I assigned point values to each round, with a championship win getting a max score of 7, a championship game loss a 6, Final Four a 5, etc down to a first round exit worth 1 point and NIT/no postseason worth 0. I went back to 1975, when the tournament field expanded to 32 teams.

It turns out my graduating year (2015) ranked in a 5-way tie for 33rd out of 44 seasons by this calculation, and 35th by win percentage. So pretty far down the list, but not second to last like this year's senior class has witnessed (losing in the first round for the first time in Roy's career, plus of course a global pandemic) or the period around the Doherty years.

#2 though: 1983, the year my dad graduated from Carolina, and the #1 four year stretch in modern program history: 1984, the year my mom graduated from Carolina. Both of which witnessed Michael Jordan make the game winner in the 1982 title game.

FourYearPeriod	Coach	Postseason	RankTournament	RunTotal	RankWinPer	RunWinPer
1983–84	Smith	NCAA Regional Semifinal	1	20	1	85.15%
1982–83	Smith	NCAA Regional Final	2	19	11	80.67%
1984–85	Smith	NCAA Regional Final	3	18	4	84.30%
1992–93	Smith	NCAA Championship	3	18	28	75.95%
2007–08	Williams	NCAA National Semifinal	3	18	3	84.32%
2008–09	Williams	NCAA Championship	3	18	2	84.39%
2016–17	Williams	NCAA Championship	3	18	27	76.00%
2017–18	Williams	NCAA Second Round	3	18	29	75.92%
2018–19	Williams	NCAA Regional Semifinal	3	18	18	78.96%
1981–82	Smith	NCAA Championship	10	17	10	81.06%
1993–94	Smith	NCAA Second Round	10	17	12	80.51%
1994–95	Smith	NCAA National Semifinal	10	17	13	80.38%
1997–98	Guthridge	NCAA National Semifinal	10	17	15	79.36%
1995–96	Smith	NCAA Second Round	14	16	15	79.36%
1999–00	Guthridge	NCAA National Semifinal	14	16	32	75.29%
2009–10	Williams	NIT Runner-Up	14	16	17	79.35%
2010–11	Williams	NCAA Regional Final	14	16	19	78.55%
1987–88	Smith	NCAA Regional Final	18	15	7	81.41%
1990–91	Smith	NCAA National Semifinal	18	15	31	75.60%
2006–07	Williams	NCAA Regional Final	18	15	22	77.07%
2011–12	Williams	NCAA Regional Final	18	15	24	76.53%
1985–86	Smith	NCAA Regional Semifinal	22	14	8	81.36%
1986–87	Smith	NCAA Regional Final	22	14	5	84.14%
1988–89	Smith	NCAA Regional Semifinal	22	14	6	82.26%
1989–90	Smith	NCAA Regional Semifinal	22	14	21	77.11%
1991–92	Smith	NCAA Regional Semifinal	22	14	34	73.17%
1996–97	Smith	NCAA National Semifinal	22	14	23	76.99%
1998–99	Guthridge	NCAA First Round	28	13	25	76.42%
2000–01	Doherty	NCAA Second Round	28	13	33	74.99%
2015–16	Williams	NCAA Runner-Up	28	13	36	72.74%
2013–14	Williams	NCAA Third Round	31	12	30	75.66%
2019–20	Williams	—	31	12	39	68.94%
1977–78	Smith	NCAA First Round	33	11	14	79.86%
1979–80	Smith	NCAA Second Round	33	11	20	77.69%
1980–81	Smith	NCAA Runner-Up	33	11	26	76.07%
2005–06	Williams	NCAA Second Round	33	11	38	70.25%
2014–15	Williams	NCAA Regional Semifinal	33	11	35	73.17%
1978–79	Smith	NCAA Second Round	38	10	9	81.14%
2012–13	Williams	NCAA Third Round	38	10	37	71.52%
2004–05	Williams	NCAA Championship	40	9	42	58.84%
2001–02	Doherty	—	41	8	41	59.76%
2002–03	Doherty	NIT Quarterfinals	42	7	44	55.69%
2020–21	Williams	NCAA First Round	43	6	40	64.15%
2003–04	Williams	NCAA Second Round	44	4	43	56.24%

Carolina's Hardest Game Each Year Isn't Always Duke on the Road

Conventional wisdom (via a poll, sample size = 2) would think that the annual Duke game at Cameron Indoor is the single hardest game of the season for Carolina, with "hardest" defined as "least likely to win going into it". The easiest proxy for this is the closing spread going in to each game, looking at the largest margin(s) in which UNC was the underdog (which is equivalent to their lowest chance of winning). So I grabbed this data from Covers as far back as it goes (14 seasons).

That away game at Cameron was the hardest in 7 of the past 14 seasons, 50% of the time (I personally would have expected this to occur more often). The single lowest point was a spread of -15, at Duke in the 2009-10 season, which is roughly equivalent to a 7% chance of North Carolina winning. To the other extreme, Carolina's lowest win chances actually came as favorites in 2006-07 (60%) and 2008-09 (58%) - meaning they were favored to win every single game.

On average, the away game at Duke ranks as the 1.7th hardest on the schedule, and the home game in the rivalry ranks 6.9th.

Conference / non-conference splits shake out as you might expect, with the following average difficulty ranks:

• Conference Games
• Home: 24.6
• Away: 13.5
• Neutral: 14.3
• Non-Conference Games
• Home: 16.6
• Away: 8.1

"What are the odds?" UNC's 94 Year Win Streak Over Clemson At Home

I've been meaning to write this post for years, so it's fitting I only get to it only after college sports' most absurd streak is over.

North Carolina beat Clemson 59 consecutive times in Chapel Hill, the longest such streak in NCAAB, dating back to 1926. Admittedly, the annual component became less impressive once Miami and Va Tech joined the conference in 2004 and we stopped playing Clemson at home every year. But beating ANYONE 59 times in a row is impressive, regardless of the gulf between two programs. Even throughout fluctuations in UNC's strength (we beat them by 18 at home in the worst year (2001-02) in the program's history), the streak persisted until this year. 

So just how unlikely was it? Short of calculating every team's RPI (a notoriously unreliable metric) back to 1926, I tried to approximate it through a few different methodologies.

If the talent disparity each year was equal to 2005's title team (21 points better than Clemson), each win would have a 97% chance: 0.97 ^ 59 = 16.6%, or about 1 in 6. Not that crazy.

Taking the other extreme, if every year was equal to the 2002 team, where Clemson actually was slightly BETTER, factoring in home court would yield a 63.94% win probability: 0.6394 ^ 59 = 0.0000000003%, or 1 in 288,014,740,777. That's 288 billion. This is pretty close to each team being evenly matched and adding ~5 points for home court (65% win probability in each game). Which isn't a particularly satisfying answer either: this isn't representative of reality.

Over the full head-to-head records (home/away/neutral), Carolina led 128-20 (86.5%) going in to this season's game. Using this win probability gives: 0.865 ^ 59 = 0.019%, or 1 in 5,249.

Method	Single Game Prob	Streak Prob	1 in...
Worst KenPom	63.94%	0.0000000003%	288,014,740,777
Even w/ HFA	65.04%	0.0000000009%	105,280,654,806
All-Time Win %	86.49%	0.019%	5,249
Best KenPom	97.00%	16.58%	6

Even so, this streak had a 0.9% chance of ending (1 in 111) late on January 11 - until that unlikely event happened too.

"What are the odds?" Duke and Carolina Will Meet in the NCAA Tournament, and When

Duke/Carolina is arguably the fiercest rivalry in all of college sports. I can understand if you choose The Game (since they did fight an actual war at one point), but results this century don't encompass a compelling argument:

And between North Carolina and Duke, the two schools rank #3/#4 in all-time wins, have 48/42 NCAA tournament appearances, 20/16 Final Fours, and 11/11 championship game appearances (all figures are respective). So it's fairly surprising that we've never met in the NCAA tournament (we met once in the NIT, in 1971).

The committee never puts us in the same region, so the Final Four would be the earliest meeting. And even for the best teams, it's more likely than not that they won't make the Final Four. So this proposition is definitely a long shot, but not impossible; it almost happened in 1991 in the title game. So when is it expected to happen?

I started by gathering the seedings for both us and Dook over the past 20 seasons (we also missed the tournament 3 times...):

	Average	Median	Mode	Max	Min	Standard Dev
Carolina	3	2	1	1	8	2.53
Dook	1.9	2	1	1	6	1.33

We've had more variance, but the most likely seed for both teams is a 2. We also have been on the same side of the bracket only 5 times in this period, or 25% of the time (in other words, 25% of the time we could have met in the Final Four, and the rest of the time would have been in the title game).

Next, I drew a fairly deep sample of the odds a generic 1 through 8 seed makes the Final Four using the past 5 seasons of my model:

Seed	Prob FF
1	28.93%
2	23.73%
3	12.51%
4	10.59%
5	7.67%
6	4.34%
7	2.98%
8	2.20%

Note: I threw out Kentucky's region from 2015. Talk about an outlier: 78.5% to make the Final Four!

So now for the math on an outcome I certainly hope to never see; I actually agree with Coach K, who stated in '91 "that he never wanted the two schools to play in the last game of the season because it would be too devastating for the loser." (Chansky, Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina) 

Michigan St or Tennessee Will (Likely) Be the Team Left Off the 1 Line

Note: The following post was compiled before the SEC and Big 10 championship games had been played

Due to a couple of results from the past week, the four #1 seeds in this year's tournament are far from certain. Virginia and Dook are in (and one of them will be #1 overall), but there are conceivably 4 teams for the last 2 spots. Will the ACC get three #1 seeds, something a conference has done only once before? Will Gonzaga remain on the top line even after losing handily to a bid stealer? Or will the SEC and Big 10 get one or both?

I'm using the Bracket Matrix to try to answer this question, which is a compilation of 51 publicly available brackets, all trying to predict what the committee will do in a few hours. This compilation currently has North Carolina barely hanging on to the last #1 seed and Gonzaga solidly at #3 overall. But mine is a bigger question: who is getting boxed out of the top line?

I'm assuming that Kentucky has no shot; "Only twice in the past nine years has a 1-seed been given to a team that didn't win either its regular-season or conference tournament title." So that leaves the other 4 described above, Gonzaga/North Carolina/Tennessee/Michigan St. I then looked at every #1 seed combination on the Bracket Matrix:

Top Line	Count
Virginia,Duke,Gonzaga,North Carolina	24
Virginia,Duke,Gonzaga,Tennessee	12
Virginia,Duke,North Carolina,Tennessee	7
Virginia,Duke,Gonzaga,Michigan State	3
Virginia,Duke,Tennessee,Michigan State	2
Virginia,Duke,North Carolina,Michigan State	1
Virginia,Gonzaga,North Carolina,Tennessee	1
Virginia,Duke,North Carolina,Kentucky	1
Total	51

We can really ignore the last 2, which were last updated before Dook won and Kentucky lost yesterday. Of the rest, each team was left out:

Team	# Times Left Out
Michigan State	31
Tennessee	25
North Carolina	17
Gonzaga	8

The ideological differences in the brackets are interesting. It looks like it comes down to Gonzaga vs Tennessee, as 31 of the 49 predictions I considered only contain one of these two schools, and only 12 leave off North Carolina in favor of BOTH Gonzaga and Tennessee. And none of these combined 43 have Michigan St. 

We'll see tonight if the committee follows the majority of forecasters here (31/49) and chooses one of Gonzaga or Tennessee, or if they go contrarian (12/49) and leave off North Carolina.