This is today’s Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook as heard on 97.9 WCHL. You can listen to previous Sports Notebooks here.
The Tar Heels have a familiar, and pretty easy, non-conference basketball schedule.
If Carolina is permitted to make a run for the NCAA Championship in 2016, the Tar Heels have a favorable early schedule to build up their record and their RPI. The names are big, but names NOT on the schedule are more important. Like Kentucky, which is in the same building but not the same game this season.
The opener is in Annapolis against the Temple Owls, who conjure up memories of their last two tilts against UNC when Dean Smith was coaching. The last one was at the Meadowlands in 1991 in the NCAA East Championship. The Heels won to snap an eight-year Final Four drought. The match-up before that was not so nice, a 17-point home loss to the top-ranked Owls of Coach John Chaney in 1988.
Carolina plays UCLA for the 11th time, having won 7 of the last 10 meetings with the Bruins. No more Wear twins or Larry Drew, and the Heels should be heavy favorites in the CBS Sports Classic in Brooklyn. Kentucky, which plays Ohio State in the other game of the doubleheader, is next season’s opponent in Las Vegas.
The headliner of the non-conference slate is against Maryland in the Dean Dome. The Terrapins, now of the Big Ten, are a top five preseason pick, just like UNC, and it’s another renewal between Roy Williams and his protégé Mark Turgeon.
Playing Fairfield should make long-time Carolina fans remember that nerve-racking game against the 16th-seeded Stags in Winston-Salem in the 1997 NCAA Tournament. The Heels pulled away in the second half as Smith tied Adolph Rupp’s career record of 876 victories. They made Smith the winningest coach in college history two days later against Colorado.
There have been two memorable victories over Tulane, the Smith Center opponent on December 16. One was a triple-overtime thriller in 1982, when sophomore Michael Jordan would not let his team lose in Carmichael. The other was a four-overtime marathon, 113-106, in New Orleans in 1976.
And Carolina gets Texas under new coach Shaka Smart in Austin, where the Tar Heels have never beaten the Longhorns but are 4-0 in the NCAA Tournament on UT’s home court, including Rick Fox’s buzzer-beater over No. 1 Oklahoma in 1990.
“The game is over! The game is over!” shouted Woody Durham. Remember?
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