NCAA Basketball: Gonzaga’s comeback, Villanova’s upset and other takeaways

Another less-than-impressive performance from North Carolina

The Tar Heels are the preseason No. 1 team in NCAA Basketball and with that comes a bullseye from all kinds of opponents. That includes a couple of local foes from the Colonial Athletic Conference in UNC-Wilmington and College of Charleston.

UNC beat Wilmington by 13 points but the game was never a full blowout, while the Cougars gave the ACC team a major fight, leading 45-40 at the half. But thanks to 28 points from Armando Bacot and 25 from Caleb Love, the favorites eventually took over and beat College of Charleston, 102-86.

But that makes it two games to open the season where the Tar Heels played with their food a little bit. If you’re the best team in the country, you shouldn’t be trailing to a mid-major opponent at halftime when you’re fully healthy. Yet maybe that’s who this unit is. The main reason why this team got the top spot is that they returned four starters from the team that nearly won it all. They can score but aren’t great defensively outside of Leaky Black at wing.

North Carolina has three more mid-major foes (Gardner-Webb, James Madison, and Portland) before its first true test of the season, Indiana in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. If they continue to have some close calls in the next couple of weeks, then we might have to ask whether they’re really the No. 1 team in the country. But don’t expect them to lose that ranking for a while.