Tar Heel born, bred, and working on that third thing
Hey, there’s a big game this weekend, you might’ve heard about it. Later today, the North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball team will take on Duke in round one of their annual rivalry series against the Blue Devils. Every year right around this time, the two teams meet in the first of their two scheduled […]
about 1 month ago | 3 reads
The first matchup between Carolina and Duke this season has finally arrived, and the stage looks set for an exciting evening. Both teams are ranked inside the top 15 and feature projected top-five NBA draft picks. On paper, it’s a game that could very well end up among the highlights of college basketball’s greatest rivalry. […]
about 1 month ago | 6 reads
Carolina has nine games left in the regular season. 70% of the regular season is in the bag. In a perfect world, the post season will add nine more games (and nine more wins). TBD. Here’s where the three main metrics currently rank UNC and its remaining opponents: Meanwhile, the AP poll thinks the Heels […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
When the Duke Blue Devils arrive in Chapel Hill in the early afternoon on Saturday, the program will be without a loss to an ACC opponent for 364 days. Since a 77-71 loss at Clemson on February 8, 2025, Duke has won 20 straight games. Two of those 20 were against the Tar Heels. In […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
Christian Laettner, Grayson Allen, Austin Rivers, and JJ Redick. This is a short list of some of the most hated Duke players of all time. Each player has a specific reason why they are hated by the Carolina fanbase, but on a micro level, we all probably have someone that we hold a personal grudge […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read
There may only be nine games left in the college basketball regular season, but with the NFL season ending on Sunday, Saturday night marks the actual start of the college basketball season for a lot of people. It is, of course, Carolina vs Duke Round 1. It’s the best rivalry in college basketball if not […]
about 1 month ago | 6 reads
Saturday, September 28, 2019. Once a season, down in the Bowles Lot, the tailgate menu is centered around seafood. “The Bowles Boil.” With top-ranked Clemson coming to town for a 3:30 PM kickoff, it was the perfect game for the boil. It was going to be a hot one that day, and seafood and beer […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
Several years ago, the ACC made a move that would change the sports world as we know it and make one weekend in February one of the greatest in all of sports. The first UNC/Duke matchup was historically on a weekday night up until the 2020 season when the ACC moved it to the first […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
Success is measured differently by just about everyone. Some people use wealth or status as markers; for others, it’s health or family; and for still others, it’s if your team beats your biggest rival in their stadium on the day their coach is celebrating his retirement. The point is: people have varying opinions on what […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
On Monday evening, while many Tar Heels fans had their eyes on the men’s team’s game against Syracuse, the women’s team pulled out its biggest win of the season in Raleigh. Courtney Banghart’s group trailed NC State by as many as nine points in the second quarter before outscoring the Wolfpack 26-11 over the rest […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read
As of Sunday, the calendar has now flipped to February. We are inching towards crunch time on the 2025-26 college basketball season. You know things are starting to heat up when the first UNC-Duke men’s game comes on the calendar, as it will this week. As we continue to get closer to March and the […]
about 1 month ago | 5 reads
This weekend, the North Carolina men’s basketball has quite the important event. On Saturday, they’re set to take on Duke in the first rivalry clash of this season. However before that, they had a game on Monday night against Syracuse to get through. There were two main objectives for UNC against the Orange. One was […]
about 1 month ago | 5 reads
The game before the first Duke game has not been kind to North Carolina of late. In it’s past six contests before the Duke game leading up to the game against Syracuse, the Tar Heels were 1-5 with the one win being an overtime road win against Louisville. The five losses were mostly to not […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
This year’s 2026 Carolina Basketball recruiting class is about as thin as it has ever been, and that is because they only have one commit so far. That might change in the coming weeks — more on that a little later — but it’s worth pointing out that the one recruit they do have is […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read
It’s Duke week. In fact, with last night’s game thankfully behind us, the countdown to Saturday’s UNC-Duke game has officially begun. We’re all working ourselves up in anticipation of the biggest rivalry in American sports and we’ll have plenty of coverage leading up to that big night. Of course, on another corner of the Triangle, […]
about 1 month ago | 3 reads
UNC won their fourth straight game with a 87-77 victory against Syracuse in Chapel Hill Monday night. The Orange, who were left for dead halfway through the second half, picked themselves up off the mat and made it a game with a big run late. The Tar Heels led by as many as 32 in […]
about 1 month ago | 2 reads
The Tar Heels have returned to the Smith Center to face off against Syracuse in hopes of extending their win streak to four. UNC is coming of an impressive victory over Georgia Tech, while the Orange were able to secure a home victory over Notre Dame. The main storyline of this game revolves around fine […]
about 1 month ago | 3 reads
Short turnarounds between games often put a team at a disadvantage. A little over 48 hours will have passed between the end of UNC’s 91-75 win over Georgia Tech and the tipoff of this matchup against Syracuse. The players may be a bit more tired on shorter rest, and the quick turnaround no doubt affects […]
about 1 month ago | 3 reads
Welcome to Tar Heel Blog’s Question of the Day, a new daily conversation starter. Our first question today could actually be “where do we even start?” How do we pick just one question, among the many springing out of UNC athletics? We could debate the debate itself. Belichick and Lombardi’s 2025 season exposes a fault […]
about 1 month ago | 0 reads
Don’t look now, but the Tar Heels are on a three-game win streak, spanning two different winter weather systems here in the Triangle In most years, if you said that the Tar Heels had seen two separate instances of accumulation of wintery precipitation fall and melt without dropping a game, you would likely expect the […]
about 1 month ago | 3 reads
After getting to enjoy the win over Georgia Tech for about 10 seconds, UNC has to turn around and prepare to take on Syracuse at the Dean Dome. The Orange are coming off an 86-72 victory over Notre Dame, which was needed after they got smoked by NC State. The Heels seemingly have an easy […]
about 1 month ago | 0 reads
It was the sort of easy, sleepy type of victory that is actually pretty rare when the Tar Heels head down to Atlanta and play against Georgia Tech. Carolina won by 16 in a game that stayed in that point range from the end of the first half, and scored 91 with two different Tar […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read
North Carolina won their third straight and second straight on the road to get their fifth win in conference play this season. The Tar Heels took an early lead over the Yellow Jackets and though they didn’t blow past them, they kept that lead steady for most of the game as they led by 15 […]
about 1 month ago | 0 reads
UNC poured it on early and often in their 91-75 win on the road against Georgia Tech. The Tar Heels scored 52 points in the first half and turned the ball over just twice behind big games from Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar. The Yellow Jackets led for just 26 seconds of the game. Wilson […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read
Atlanta is a city that has never been super kind to the Tar Heels. It doesn’t usually matter how good or bad Georgia Tech is when these who teams play — there is just something about this game in this location that always goes wrong. One can only hope that isn’t what happens today, because […]
about 1 month ago | 1 read