North Carolina opens up its Atlantic Coast Conference play with a trip to Pittsburgh, as the Panthers seek their first league success in nearly two years.
TV schedule: Saturday, January 5, 12:00 pm ET. Raycom.
Arena:Â Petersen Events Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Two Atlantic Coast Conference squads with identical non-conference records will do battle this Saturday afternoon.
Pittsburgh (10-3), led by new head coach and former Duke assistant Jeff Capel, will host No. 15 North Carolina (10-3) at the Petersen Events Center, in the inaugural ACC contest for both teams during the 2018-19 campaign.
The Panthers, who have dropped 22 league affairs in a row, had a solid out-of-conference performance by notching 10 victories, although their non-conference schedule didn’t prove terribly challenging.
Historically, Pittsburgh is extremely difficult to defeat at home. In more recent years, however, the Panthers are a bit more vulnerable on their own turf, having fallen seven-consecutive times at the Petersen Events Center to ranked foes, per the university’s athletics department.
Presently, Pitt is on a three-game winning streak, albeit to some rather light competition. Its most-recent triumph, on Dec. 29, amounted to a 68-54 home conquest over Colgate.
The Tar Heels, meanwhile, looked lackluster in their 77-57 besting of Harvard on Wednesday evening in Chapel Hill, N.C., according to head coach Roy Williams, who has captured three national championships with the storied basketball powerhouse.
UNC has certainly proved a mixed bag prior to ACC clashes commencing. Texas snuck by the Tar Heels on a neutral court, then North Carolina got smoked at Michigan, and the Tar Heels also experienced a neutral-site setback to Kentucky. On the other hand, UNC produced an impressive shellacking of Gonzaga.
The Wolverines, the Wildcats and the Bulldogs are all highly rated, so the Tar Heels have definitely tested themselves to date in 2018-19. As far as the NCAA’s NET rankings, North Carolina checks in at No. 16, while the Panthers are slotted at No. 69.
Unsurprisingly, the Tar Heels are deemed heavy favorites in this duel, with ESPN.com’s match-up predictor saying that UNC possesses an 80.1 percent chance of prevailing.
From a statistical perspective, the Tar Heels are much more prolific on offense, but Pittsburgh does allow about 11 fewer points on defense. Shooting percentages from the field as a whole, the 3-point arc and the charity stripe are fairly even. Both crews commit 14 turnovers a game.
A critical component for the Panthers is to not get totally dominated on the glass, which North Carolina frequently does to its opponents. UNC is a scoring machine, with an average tally of 90 points per contest. Pitt will have to slow down the tempo if it has any hope of winning.
I firmly believe that the Panthers are re-energized under Capel, and there’s no doubt that a boisterous pro-Pittsburgh crowd will rock the Pete. However, in the end, I just feel that the Tar Heels have too much offensive firepower for Pitt to ultimately contain. The Panthers will surely land an ACC victory in the near future, but not this coming Saturday.
Prediction: North Carolina 80 – Pittsburgh 70
Add us as a preferred source on Google