After four straight games that were tests of various degrees, North Carolina are now set to play a fairly straight-forward one. On Saturday, the Tar Heels are set to welcome USC Upstate to Chapel Hill,
as Carolina looks for a third consecutive win.
The Spartans, from the Big South Conference, come into this matchup with a 6-5 record. According to the KenPom ratings, Upstate is ranked in the low 200s out of the 365 Division I teams. Their only somewhat decent win is over Fresno State, although they did keep the final losing margin against Nebraska to single digits. That’s the only game against a power conference team that they’ve played so far.
Offensively, USC Upstate is led by a three-headed guard trio, who all average right around the 15 point per game mark. Junior college transfer Mason Bendinger leads the way for them, going for 16.1 points. However if you’re looking for the warning sign player for who could make this game annoying if they get hot, there’s Carmelo Adkins. The sophomore is the Spartans’ third leading scorer behind Bendinger and Karmani Gregory, but at 14.7, he’s right there. What could make him interesting is that he shoots 42.0% from three on over six attempts per game. Not that this game should be close, but if for some reason it is, you could see that being the case because Adkins knocked down eight threes or something else crazy.
A thing the Spartans definitely have going for them is that they have a pretty solid defense. They’ve held opponents to a 96.0 offensive rating and under 70 points per game. They’re also pretty middle of the pack in the nation in terms of tempo, so it’s not as if that points per game number is deflated because of slow play. Sure, they’ve haven’t played anyone as good as UNC yet, but that’s pretty decent.
One thing you can definitely say about Upstate though, is that they can’t really match UNC’s size. They have one player listed at 7-1 in Coen Collier, but he hasn’t had a ton of impact, averaging under two points despite playing over 15 minutes per game. Their next tallest player is the 6-9 Jafeth Martinez. Now, Martinez averages a Big South leading 2.1 blocks per game and rates as a solid defensive player overall by advanced stats, but dealing with the likes of Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar will almost certainly be a bigger task than he’s faced down low so far.
USC Upstate is far from the worst team in the country, but nothing in doing research about them points to being able to give the Tar Heels a real test. Ideally, this game is out of reach sometime early in the second half and Hubert Davis can use the stretch run of it to test the depth to see who can be trusted more once the conference season comes around. Of course, not everything goes to plan, so maybe that doesn’t happen, but UNC really needs a problem free game on Saturday.
