It’s hard to believe we’re already in the last week of the ACC regular season, but as the calendar flips to March, that’s where we are. The Tar Heels play their last home game of the 2025-2026 season on Tuesday night, hosting the Clemson Tigers as both teams vie for a top-4 finish to conference play and that sweet, sweet double-bye. It’ll be a ceremonious occasion, too, as it will be the game for R.J. Davis’ jersey honoring and Seth Trimble’s Senior Night. With a lot at stake in terms of both ball
and vibes, here are some things to look for as the Heels gear up for their penultimate game of the regular season.
Three-Point Defense
Clemson is kind of like UNC this season in that the Tigers have a lot of players who are alleged as shooters, and take three-pointers like a team that thinks it can shoot, and while sometimes that’s worked out for them like in their most recent game against Louisville where Jestin Porter shot 4/8 from behind the line to propel his team to victory, most of the time it has ended up hurting them — during the 4-game losing streak that preceded the Louisville game, they shot worse than 30% from three-point range, and they’re shooting a mediocre 34% from distance this season. On one hand, you’d rather face a team that’s not shooting well than one that is shooting well, but on the other, we have seen too many times that this is exactly the kind of team, one with a history of making shots that isn’t currently making those shots, that just needs to see a couple of open looks go down before turning into absolute snipers. Clemson’s best shooters by the numbers are not the guys who are taking the most shots — Jake Wahlin and Dillon Hunter shoot 37% and 36% respectively on about 85 attempts each on the season, while Efrem Johnson shoots 35% on 95 attempts this season and the aforementioned Porter shoots 34% on a whopping 158 attempts. This is not a game where Carolina should be “paying attention to the scouting report” and prioritizing a team’s best shooters so much as just getting sticky on the perimeter. The way to beat this Clemson offense is to let them shoot while contesting every shot — don’t send help to shooters, don’t help off other ones, but just stay on your man. This is a willing shooting team that isn’t very good at passing — to some extent, the best way to beat them is to let them beat themselves.
Turnovers
The Tar Heels have the 18th-best turnover rate in the country, but when they do turn the ball over, it tends to be in bunches, which give their opponents quick and easy offense and, on an off day, let those opponents put together quick runs that are difficult to counter and make games harder than they should be. That could be an ugly combination with this Clemson defense, which has been the second-best in the ACC during conference play at forcing turnovers. It’s not a great time for UNC to have point guard questions anew, with Derek Dixon’s play having seriously regressed in the past couple of weeks — against Virginia Tech, he played just 17 minutes to Kyan Evans’ 24, and after spending most of the season as UNC’s most reliable perimeter shooter, he’s hit just 5 of his last 28 three-point attempts, and that’s brought an average that was in the 40’s down to 34%. That said, he and Evans were responsible for just 1 of UNC’s 13 turnovers against the Hokies and handed out 6 combined assists, so it’s not completely like taking care of the ball was all that related to said point guard questions. Rather, half of those turnovers came from players not being strong enough with the ball in the paint: 6 from the combination of Jarin Stevenson and Zayden High, and another one from Henri Veesaar. Unfortunately, that’s where Clemson also feasts on generating turnovers; starting center Carter Welling boasts a genuinely impressive steal rate for a big man. The Heels will have to be smart with the ball in the paint given their lack of real bulk among the three players rotating in the post. This is certainly not a game where you win by just pounding it inside and expecting results.
The Home Streak
Alas, I still mourn the fact that I can’t just stick a jab in these articles about Clemson being an auto-win in Chapel Hill anymore. But even though I’m not talking about the Tigers being 2-61 or whatever when visiting UNC, there’s still some home stadium history at stake with this one: the Heels are so far undefeated at home this season. Thanks to the ACC’s unbalanced scheduling (with the exceptions of Louisville, Duke, and Georgia Tech, UNC has played basically all its weak ACC opponents at home and all its okay-to-good ones on the road — and Syracuse, whom they’ve played twice, basically splits the difference) and a pretty weak non-conference slate, it’s not all that impressive when you dig into it, but that home record still includes wins against good Louisville, Kansas, and Duke teams. The Smith Center has felt a little more hostile (complimentary) this year than in some previous; I suspect people are finally starting to remember how to be in crowds again after 5 years and the vibes of this team are a lot less sour than those of most Hubert Davis teams (‘24 excepted). Maybe the discussion that’s recently popped up about the Center’s potential relocation has played a role in people feeling more passionate about being there; there’s nothing like the threat of something being taken away to make you hold on to it tighter.
All that is to say that the last time UNC went undefeated at home, they cut down the nets. I’m not saying that’s at stake on Tuesday, I’m just saying that it could be fun to dream.
