The North Carolina Tar Heels are still figuring themselves out on the basketball court, but Saturday’s victory against La Salle showed how good they could be.
UNC (6-4, 1-0 ACC) beat the visiting Explorers, 93-67, on an afternoon informally known as Cade Tyson Escape Game. North Carolina’s top offseason transfer, who became a perimeter shooting ace at Belmont, scored a game-high 23 points on 9-of-14 shooting.
The Tar Heels’ 2-game winning streak is about to be put to the test, as they face Florida (Tuesday) and UCLA (Saturday) in their next two games.
With many marquee college basketball games the week before Christmas, UNC-Florida and UNC-UCLA were named two of the top 10 games in the country.
College basketball analyst Andy Katz ranked UNC-UCLA fourth, then UNC-Florida ranked fifth.
On Tuesday, December 17 at 7 p.m., North Carolina will face Florida Alligators in the Jumpman by invitation. Florida (10-0) is favored, and rightly so, but Tar Heels guard RJ Davis expects the Spectrum Center (Charlotte, N.C.) to feel like a home-court advantage.
On Saturday, December 21 at 3 p.m., from the famous Madison Square Garden in New York, UNC will face a much-improved UCLA (9-1) team. The Bruins got off to a 2-0 start in their first season in the Big 10, beating Oregon And Washington in consecutive games.
North Carolina is 1-4 against Power 4 opponents in its young season, along with the Tar Heels only victory against Georgia Tech in their ACC opener.
Alabama blew out UNC in the ACC-SEC Challenge, while Auburn did the same in the Maui Invitational. North Carolina nearly came back to beat then-first-ranked Kansas on the road, then took Michigan State overtime.
If the Tar Heels want to prove they are a good team this season, beating Florida and UCLA will go a long way toward achieving that goal.
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This article was originally published on Tar Heels Wire: UNC’s only basketball program will have two best games of the week
