Former North Carolina star Harrison Barnes believes the Tar Heels would have won the 2012 NCAA title had point guard Kendall Marshall not suffered a tournament-ending injury.
Marshall went down with a broken wrist in a second round game vs. Creighton.
Barnes believes the injury changed the championship outcome:
Marshall was the leader of the offense on that Tar Heel team as he had a 3.48 assist-to-turnover ratio that was the second best in ACC history, per ESPN. Marshall averaged a near 10 assists per game and led the entire country in total assists.
North Carolina would be without Marshall for the rest of the tournament and would lose in the Elite Eight to Kansas.
For a Tar Heel team that had their sights set on a rematch with Kentucky and National Championship, everything was drastically changed by the Marshall injury.
If Marshall didn’t get hurt, would North Carolina have won the title?
“I believe so,” Barnes said when I talked to him about that special UNC team.
“We were a tight-knit unit. This last team that won it, we were able to see how close they were. I feel like we were very similar and close. I felt like we had a good shot to win it. Obviously Kendall gets hurt and we were unable to make it to the Final Four. If he was out there, we would have won it all.”
Of course, Kentucky, led by Anthony Davis, went on to cut down the nets that season.
