UNC vs Baylor: Observations from NCAA tournament second-round game in East Region
At Dickies Arena for today’s second-round NCAA tournament game against top-seeded Baylor, No. 8 seed North Carolina hopes to become the third Tar Heels team to upset a No. 1 seed as an eight seed. If it achieves the feat, Hubert Davis’ first team will join Carolina’s 1990 and 2000 tournament teams.
This year marks the fifth time UNC has made the NCAA tournament as an eight seed.
C.L. Brown, who is at Dickies Arena, will provide updates from the scene.
Neutral court, indeed
Waco, Texas, home of Baylor University, is only about 80 miles from Fort Worth. But the Bears haven’t turned Dickies Arena into a home court advantage.
As fans are still filing in for the 11:10 a.m. local tip between Baylor and North Carolina, there only slightly appears to be more fans donning green and yellow than Carolina blue.
At a glance it seems as if Kansas, which plays Creighton in the game following the Tar Heels and Bears, will have the biggest contingent of fans represented.
Always a Tar Heel
In the stands seated right behind former UNC coach Roy Williams is former forward Garrison Brooks. The 6-foot-9 forward played at Carolina from 2017-21, but left as a graduate transfer to play at Mississippi State, where his father is an assistant coach.
Early tip a problem?
While the game is at noon eastern time, the local clocks are on central time in Fort Worth. The 11:10 a.m. tipoff is easily the earliest Carolina has played a game this season. At least one UNC player was all for it.
“I love playing this early, 12:00 o’clock games, that’s, like, my favorite game to play,” Armando Bacot said. “There’s not much of a build up to the game. You’re not sitting around all day. You can just wake up, eat, and then go straight to the game. So I love an early start.”
Brady Manek ejected
North Carolina forward Brady Manek was given a flagrant-2 foul for elbowing Baylor forward Jeremy Sochan in the upper body and disqualified from the game. Manek had to watch the remaining 10 minutes of the game from the locker room.
He finished with 26 points on 8-for-13 shooting — including four 3-pointers. It marked the fifth time in the last six games that Manek scored at least 20 points.
