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The Tar Heels are much better, and Louisville is not Pitt.

A few of my fanatical friends are worried about tonight’s game against Louisville, which comes to Chapel Hill for a 9:00 tip that should put us all to sleep by halftime.

Hall of Fame coach Denny Crum must be rolling in his grave over what has happened to the Cardinals since his two national championships in the 1980s.

Rick Pitino resurrected them early in the 21st century, but his 15 seasons there ended in disgrace when the NCAA vacated wins from 2012 through 2015, including the 2013 NCAA title and Final Four appearances and the ACC regular season and tournament championships in the very first year Louisville joined the conference.

And then there was the hooker recruiting scandal that . . . well, enough about Pitino.

The Cards have been to only two NCAA tournaments since Pitino was fired, and they have had too many coaches to count since then. The latest is second-year Kenny Payne, who played there but is far less known than his assistants Danny Manning from Greensboro and Nolan Smith from Duke.

Louisville should dress out Manning and Smith. The record coming in is 6-10 overall and 1-4 in the ACC. Yes, that one victory was at Miami, which is more like a rainstorm compared to the Hurricanes we have seen the last few years.

If the fourth-ranked Tar Heels have a letdown, that won’t be enough. Carolina is superior in every statistical category from points per game and defensive efficiency to shooting everywhere on the floor.

It’s way too early to look ahead, but some UNC fans are crowing about Joe Lunardi having the Heels as a No. 1 seed bound for Charlotte in the first two rounds of the Dance.

Carolina is a three-touchdown favorite in the game, and Louisville’s defense is so bad that a friend of one of the aforementioned fanatics says this: “If we make 3-plus passes per possession, we will get a wide-open shot.”

Please, don’t have flashbacks of Pitt coming to town in 2022, when the Panthers were 10-16 and 5-10 and beat the Heels 76-67 in what looked like doomsday for Hubert Davis’ first team. Of course, that spurred Carolina on to its historical March Madness, beginning with the upset of Duke in Durham.

Personally, I like to remember some of the great games versus Louisville in a series UNC leads 19-7. My favorite was on Sunday, March 2, 1977, the day after the loaded Tar Heels (without Tommy LaGarde) whipped Duke in Cameron behind Phil Ford in what was their eighth of 15 straight wins on the way to the NCAA championship game against Marquette in Atlanta.

While many of us gleefully left Durham and some headed for the Greensboro Coliseum to see Bruce Springsteen, Dean Smith had accepted Crum’s challenge to play their regular season finale the very next day in Charlotte on national TV. The Heels beat the 10th-ranked Cardinals 96-89.

It will be far, far worse tonight.

 

Featured image via Associated Press/Timothy D. Easley

Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.

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