The UNC basketball program is set to face off against Marquette in the 8/9 matchup in the East Region on Thursday, and this should be a game that goes down to the wire.
The Tar Heels played some of their best basketball from mid-February to early March, punching their ticket to the tournament after being on the bubble for a few weeks. Meanwhile, Marquette had a bit of a bumpy road in February despite beating Villanova.
Under Shaka Smart who is in his first year as head coach of the program, the Golden Eagles are trying to end a bad trend. They are 0-2 in their last two appearances (2019 and 2017) and haven’t won a game since their Elite 8 run in 2013. Smart has had his struggles as well.
Since 2013, he’s 1-4 including 0-3 with Texas and 1-1 with VCU.
Alan Bykowski of CrackedSidewalks.com talked about Marquette trying to buck a trend here on Thursday:
I’m not sure how well-known the story is outside Milwaukee, but there were reports that Shaka Smart was very close to becoming Marquette’s head coach back in 2014 when Buzz Williams left. It began with reports that members of Marquette’s administration along with alum Doc Rivers flew out to Virginia to seal the deal with Smart, which was reported as a “done deal” by a local insider. It got to the point that local news media was reporting Smart had taken the job. Instead, Smart and Marquette didn’t come to an agreement and we ended up with Steve Wojciechowski. Marquette fans are hoping that was maybe a cosmic error. Since then, Marquette is 0-2 in NCAA Tournament games and Shaka Smart is 0-4. Maybe Smart was supposed to be here all along and the NCAA gods were punishing both of us for not coming to an agreement sooner. We’ll hope to see both of those trends flip in Fort Worth.
For North Carolina, they are looking to avoid losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons for the first time ever. They fell to Wisconsin in the 8/9 game a year ago.
Something has to give…
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