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Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Ryan Phillips

Jay Bilas Had Good Reason for Not Getting Mad About UNC Getting in to NCAA Tournament

Jay Bilas during ESPN College GameDay broadcast before Auburn Tigers men's basketball takes on Texas A&M Aggies. | Jake Crandall/USA Today / USA TODAY NETWORK

Jay Bilas is not going to worry about the teams that barely missed the NCAA tournament and who got in instead of them.

On Sunday after the NCAA tournament field was announced, ESPN's Jay Williams echoed the complaints of many, lamenting that North Carolina was included in the field. Bilas shut that conversation down quickly.

"To me guys, that's my biggest takeaway from this whole thing, is for North Carolina. I don't know how they made the tournament and West Virginia didn't make the tournament," Williams said. "North Carolina had 11 opportunities to play against teams in the field, they only won one of those on a neutral court in December. They have four losses to teams that didn't make the tournament... I just feel like West Virginia is way more deserving to be in the tournament than North Carolina."

Bilas didn't want to play along.

"I'm not as worked up about the end of the line this year as I have been in past years," Bilas said. "We spend too much time talking about the 30th-best team in the country or the 35th-best team in the country."

That's a completely fair stance. While other teams certainly have solid arguments to make about making the tournament over North Carolina, all of them had opportunities to solidify their spots in the field and failed.


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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Jay Bilas Had Good Reason for Not Getting Mad About UNC Getting in to NCAA Tournament.

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