20) 2017 North Carolina Tar Heels
Record: 33-7, 14-4 in ACC
The core of this North Carolina Tar Heels team was good for several years. The 2017 season title was their crowning achievement after falling short in the title game the previous year to the Villanova Wildcats.
North Carolina suffered more losses than normal for a national champion, including two defeats to unranked teams. The Tar Heels won their games in the Elite Eight, thanks to Luke Maye’s buzzer beater. They won their two Final Four games by a combined three points, and needed a huge comeback just to eke past the Arkansas Razorbacks in the second round.
Only two players for North Carolina’s latest championship team are currently in an NBA rotation. That would be Justin Jackson and Theo Pinson. The Tar Heels also were never ranked in the top two of the AP Poll at any point in the season, although they were only outside the top 10 for a total of three weeks.
That’s why they’re so low, but don’t look past the many good things about this team, either.
Part of the reason for their loses is that they played in the toughest conference in the country. And they won it by two games, too. Jackson, Pinson, Joel Berry, Kennedy Meeks and Maye have all been All-ACC performers in the collegiate careers. They also had another first-round pick in Tony Bradley.
It wasn’t always pretty, but North Carolina deserved this title, even if it was by the skin of their teeth.