Vibes were good with Carolina fans for the first couple months of the season. Oh sure there was the frustrating loss to Michigan State on Thanksgiving, but the team followed it up with an impressive win against Kentucky. a Then a gutsy come-from-behind-after-they-choked-the-lead win against Ohio State. The defense looked solid, the Tar Heels have one of the best freshmen in the country, and for a while there everyone was just on cloud nine.
Then the trips to the newest members of the conference happened
and all of a sudden it is last season all over again.
In the aftermath of the loss to Stanford on Wednesday night, a lot has floated around on social media pointing out just how bad Carolina’s defense had been—and in some instances picking on one player in particular. The Tar Heels have made life amazing for whomever a team’s leading scorer is, as the warts of a team that hasn’t played many actual basketball games together has started to show. It’s not too surprising that teams full of experienced Power 4 and college players have been able to find holes to exploit, and frankly the Tar Heels haven’t helped themselves much.
All of this has brought the undercurrent of just how important a season this was for Hubert Davis back to the surface. The resulting conversations from this tend to cut out the honest criticisms and reasons to explain some of these issues, but again that’s just the world we live in and the fans we are.
Regardless, Davis and the Tar Heels have a chance to swerve that narrative back in the right direction today with their final out-of-time zone game of the regular season. Now that they’ve been in the Bay Area since Monday, one would assume they’ve acclimated to the area, climate, and time zone. That they’ll be playing in the afternoon should also help.
The team they are facing is Cal, another squad that is a dangerous matchup for the Tar Heels. They hung with Duke until the end on Wednesday night, and at 13-5 they also won’t be a push over. In fact as it stands, this is a Quadrant One game for Carolina—as was Wednesday’s game against Stanford. So the question is did Carolina use these last couple of days to look in the mirror and shore some things up as they dive deeper into the schedule, or will more cracks start to form.
We’ll find out today. If you aren’t in Berkley to watch the game, here’s where you’ll find the action:
- Time: 4:00 PM ET
- Location: Haas Pavilion — Berkley, CA
- TV: ACC Network with Wes Durham and Dennis Scott calling the action.
- Radio: Tar Heel Sports Network with Jones Angell and company. Here’s a list of affiliates airing the THSN broadcast. You can also listen to them on GoHeels.com, The Varsity Network, Tune In, and Sirius XM on channel 193.
- Streaming: You can watch the ACCN’s coverage of the game on the Watch ESPN app on all your various devices
- Line: UNC -6.5/ML -225
