Tar Heels Take On Ohio State For WBB Sweet 16 Spot

COLUMBUS, Ohio – North Carolina will play for the 19^th Sweet 16 trip in program history when the Tar Heels take on host Ohio State Monday afternoon in an NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament second round game. Tipoff at Value City Arena at the Schottenstein Center is 4 p.m. and the game will air live on ESPN.

The sixth-seeded Tar Heels (22-10) are coming off a 61-59 win over St. John's in a first round game on Saturday. The third-seeded Buckeyes (26-7) advanced with an 80-66 win over James Madison.

Ohio State is ranked No. 12 in both polls and will be UNC's 12^th Top-25 opponent of the season. The Tar Heels are 6-5 this season against ranked teams.

Carolina is aiming to reach the Sweet 16 for the second year in a row. If the Tar Heels can do that, it would be the first time in program history they've advanced past the second round when playing as a anything higher than a five seed, which is what they were last year. This year marks just the seventh time in the team's 30 postseason appearances that UNC has been seeded sixth or higher.

Heels vs. Buckeyes
• UNC and Ohio State are meeting for the 10th time. The Tar Heels have won five of the previous nine meetings, but the Buckeyes won the most recent.
• The teams last met in the 2018-19 season, when OSU won 76-69 in an ACC-Big Ten Challenge game played in Columbus on Nov. 29, 2018. Liz Roberts – a four-year Tar Heel player who graduated in 2020 and now serves as the team's Director of Recruiting Management and Student-Athlete Engagement – is the only member of the current team who was part of that UNC trip to Columbus.
• The teams have met just once in NCAA Tournament play, in a thriller in 2015, which was the last time Carolina hosted first and second round games. In a second-round matchup in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels won 86-84 on a buzzer-beater by Jamie Cherry. Her jumper with 0.6 seconds to play sent UNC on to the Sweet 16. Coincidentally, OSU also advanced to the second round that year with a first-round win over James Madison.
• Monday's game is UNC's third this season against a team from the Big Ten. The Tar Heels have dropped both of the previous matchups, falling at then-No. 5 Indiana on Dec. 1 in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and to then-No. 19 Michigan on Dec. 20 in Charlotte, N.C., in the inaugural Jumpman Invitational.

Carolina in the Big Dance
North Carolina earned an at-large NCAA Tournament bid for the third year in a row and is seeded sixth in the Seattle 3 Region.
• UNC is making its 30th NCAA Tournament appearance and, after the first-round win over St. John's, is 50-28 all-time with an NCAA Championship in 1994 and Final Four trips in 1994, 2006 and 2007.
• Carolina is one of just seven schools, all of which were in this year's field, to have been part of the NCAA bracket 30 or more times. The others are Tennessee (41), Georgia (36), Stanford (36), Texas (35), UConn (34) and Maryland (30).
• With its 50th NCAA Tournament win on Saturday, Carolina became the 10th program with 50 or more tournament wins.
• UNC is playing as a No. 6 seed for just the second time in school history. The first was in 1985, when the Tar Heels fell in the first round at third-seeded Penn State in a 32-team field.
• Last season, North Carolina was a No. 5 seed and won two games in Tucson, Ariz., to reach the Sweet 16 for the 18th time in program history, the first since 2015.
• The Tar Heels are 22-1 all-time in NCAA Tournament games in Chapel Hill and 28-27 in games away from home.

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