The North Carolina Tar Heels basketball program will hit the court this week for the first time in the Michael Malone era. While it's only an exhibition game as they host USC, the excitement to see this team is pretty high.
North Carolina is coming off a tough season last year, blowing a big lead to VCU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. That loss led to the firing of Hubert Davis, and a few months later, they moved forward with Malone as the hire.
As we get set for the upcoming season, UNC participated in the ACC Kickoff on Wednesday as Michael Malone and a few players met the media. Here is everything that Malone had to say at the media session via Inside Carolina.
On adjustment from NBA to college coaching
I’ve been asked that question many times in the last four or five months,
and the easiest way I could answer that would be in the NBA all you do is coach. It’s all basketball. In college, the last thing you get to do is coach. You’re doing so many other things to kind of build your program.
I understood that. You know, I’d coached in college many years ago before going to the NBA, but that’s one thing I’ve realized the last five months, from recruiting to fundraising, to relationships, and then when you get the hours on the court with guys like Jarin and Neo to pour into them and help them develop and get to practice and now we have a game on Friday night, our first exhibition game, that is my happy place, when you finally get a chance to do what you love and teach and develop and help pour into these guys. But that’s by far the biggest difference from my perspective.
On how you're approaching exhibition games
Obviously you want to win every time you go out there, but more importantly, it’s going to be an opportunity for us to kind of see where we’re at. This is an early exhibition game when you consider we don’t have our season opener until November 2nd against Western Carolina.
So we’ll make sure we get guys a chance to play, different groupings of players, and really get a chance to see where we are. I’m sure our players are so tired of playing against just their teammates every single day, so finally a chance to play against — you know, Coach Eric Musselman, his team coming into town, will be a great kind of test to see where we’re at and what we need to work on.
On balancing style of Carolina play to his own coaching technique
Yeah, you know, I think I mentioned the day I was hired, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the tradition and history of UNC basketball going all the way back to a guy like Frank McGuire and Dean Smith.
And while honoring that and respecting that, at the end of the day I have to be true to myself. So we’re going to go out there and play a brand of basketball that I think is going to allow us to have success, and more importantly, sustained success.
Obviously I was a part of — a small part of a championship team that we had in Denver in 2023, and we’re trying to kind of simulate the culture, style of play, starting with defense, rebounding, playing uptempo, and also most importantly, sharing the ball and being a team and being a team that plays for each other.
Biggest surprise in the everyday part of the job compared to NBA?
Yeah, I mean, the NIL, we have a GM. We have coaches that kind of have been around the college game that are really helpful with that.
But I think the biggest thing, to your point, is — the greatest challenge is just the day-to-day and how I never feel there’s enough hours in a day. There’s always something that you have to do.
I have a tremendous coaching staff around me. I have a support staff. Eric Hoots who is here with me. I call him my chief of staff, and every day we walk in, it’s not just preparing for practice, it’s what do we have to do on campus, who do we have to touch, who do we have to say hello to, because I am a small part of a much bigger engine.
In the NBA you’re part of one team. You come to UNC, you’re one of 28 teams. What I remind everybody, as you all know, the 27 other teams at Carolina are pretty damn good. We have great coaches at UNC. We have a tremendous athletic department at UNC.
For me, I’ve kind of thrown myself into that. Going out to Omaha to support the men’s baseball team. Going to a woman’s lacrosse game to support Jenny Levy. Going to a woman’s field hockey game to support Erin Matson and her girls.
It’s something that my wife and I have kind of appreciated and are enthusiastic about. But yes, there are some days where I have no idea where the day went. I don’t even know what day it is half the time.
On ACC having good teams, what can you do to separate yours?
Good question. Obviously, we’ve been so focused on us, and obviously, as you mentioned, there’s 18 teams in a conference. Tremendous coaches in the conference. To be a part of the best conference in the country is an honor.For us as we get ready for our exhibition game on Friday night, it’s always going to start on the defensive end. I think when you ask Neo and Jarin, if you said, well, what do we work on the most, it’s probably defending at a high level because we want to be an uptempo team. We want to be a team that gets out and runs, but not at the expense of our defense.
If we can defend and we can rebound, that allows you to play that uptempo style that we want to play. I think the best teams, whether it’s college, NBA, wherever, if you defend at a high level and you rebound at a high level, you’re going to give yourself a chance to win a lot of games, and that’s been a huge point of emphasis for us from the summer workouts into the fall and now that practice has started.
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This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: What Michael Malone said at 2026 ACC Tipoff event
