The North Carolina Tar Heels are just moments away from facing off against Wyoming in their third game of the regular season. Both teams are going into this one 2-0, and the winner will earn the right to claim a 3-0 record going into this weekend’s slate of matchups. The loser will still be 2-1, but that record would mean very different things depending on which team owns said L.
The name of the game for Michael Malone and his team tonight is taking a couple of steps forward without taking any steps backwards.
While that sounds like a lazy take based off a statement made by UNC’s head coach, this is also based off observations made from the last couple of games. The great news is that the game against Wofford was more or less what fans needed to see in just about every aspect of the game, and even better, there weren’t many negatives when keeping everything in context. Were they perfect? Of course not. Were they struggling to rebound at times? Sure, but for the most part they improved more than they went backwards, so we’ll see how things pan out tonight.
One thing that Carolina fans should bear in mind going into this one is that while this is a mid-major team, Wyoming has been playing really well so far this season. It’s reasonable to think that they will get steamrolled because UNC has way more talent than them, and while the talent aspect may be true, the Cowboys are still more than capable of going crazy offensively and dominating the boards. Don’t be surprised if things don’t look great for at least 10 minutes of this game, but pessimistically, the Heels could lose if they don’t show up for all 40 minutes. UNC is talented, but they’re not “40 percent effort and we’ll still win by 30” talented.
As always, we’ll be back after the game with post-game analysis and takes. Until then, Go Heels!
