North Carolina vs College of Charleston: 2022-23 college basketball game preview, TV schedule

Will North Carolina remain No. 1 after this week or could College of Charleston pull off the ultimate scare on Friday night?

TV schedule: Friday, November 11, 7:00 pm ET, ACCNX

Arena: Dean E. Smith Center

The number one team in the country, North Carolina, takes the floor for their second game of the season against 1-0 College of Charleston. The Tar Heels are looking to bounce back from a rather underwhelming offensive showing in their season opener against UNC-Wilmington while Charleston looks to pull off some November magic with the upset.

These teams met in November of last year in Charleston, with CofC giving the Tar Heels a scare before finally losing their second-half lead and falling 94-83.

For North Carolina, this will be their second straight game against a CAA opponent. In the win against UNC-Wilmington, they displayed defensive dominance, holding their UNC-W to a putrid 32.4% eFG. This defensive presence is a culmination of the improvement they made in their improbable run to the national championship game last year as well as the addition of Northwestern transfer Pete Nance. Nance provides a lethal outside shooting element that they lose with the departure of Brady Manek but defensively, Nance is in a different class and won’t be the liability that Manek was on that side of the floor last season.

In the opener, Nance was quiet offensively (only six points with one made shot from the field) but proved to be all he was advertised to be on defense. Per KenPom, the Tar Heels held UNC-W to 0.88 points per possession and with a two-point percentage of 31%. Six different Tar Heels blocked shots in that game as well, including some from Nance and All-ACC Defensive team honoree Leaky Black.

Where North Carolina showed some weakness was on offense. The Heels were under 50% eFG and had an assist-to-turnover ratio of four to nine. The lack of assists comes as a big surprise for a team that returns almost all of its production from a team that made a run to the national championship game. The turnover number itself isn’t necessarily high, especially for a first game, but some of the turnovers that were committed were sloppy ball-handling mistakes that experienced teams can easily tighten up.

Another surprising figure from the opening win was the perimeter shooting woes. North Carolina was only 2-10 from three and even though they didn’t need to hoist up a ton of outside shots (they were doing just fine when they decided to attack the basket and get paint touches) they shot way below what their lineup should make. As of now, it seems like an outlier and not quite what to expect moving forward.

I expect North Carolina to win this game by 20-25 points if they are able to competently make shots from the perimeter and move the ball around better than they did in the opener. Good, experienced teams typically clean those up and I believe they will.

UNC-W kept the pace very low against North Carolina. That will not be the case with College of Charleston. The Cougars played the second fastest tempo in all of college basketball last year per KenPom and after their season-opening win against UT-Chattanooga, they played the seventh fastest tempo of any time in college basketball’s opening week.

In that win over UTC, the Cougars did many things well, including limiting their turnovers, winning the offensive rebounding battle, and dominating the free throw rate. Pre-season All-CAA Guard Reyne Smith was sensational from the outside, making five of his ten three-point attempts while getting to the free throw line five times. He led the team with 24 points and will be a big player to watch for against North Carolina. In last season’s match-up that saw CofC put up 83 points against the Tar Heels, Smith scored 19 points on 5-11 shooting. He won’t sneak up on Hubert Davis this season and the North Carolina defense will have to be much more prepared to run him off the perimeter.

One underrated match-up to watch for in this game is the play of Cougar big man Charles Lampten. He will be the main obstacle standing between preseason All-American Armando Bacot and the basket, a task undesirable for many in college basketball.

When North Carolina’s offense struggled from the floor against UNC-W, they relied on their ability to get to the line and create easy offense (they made 23 of their 30 free throw attempts). This was especially the case for Bacot, who was a match-up nightmare for Wilmington and the only defense they could play was by fouling him. He attempted 11 of the team’s 30 freebies.

In Lampten, the Cougars have a solid interior rim-protecting presence who blocked four shots per 100 possessions last season. Should be the perfect match-up to throw at Bacot, right? There’s just one problem: he’s almost addicted to committing fouls. Last season, Lampten was fouling ten times per 100 possessions. Last year, he fouled out in four games and in three of those games, he exhausted all five fouls in less than 15 minutes of action. It’s an impressive feat.

Against UTC, he fouled out in only 15 minutes. But the 15 minutes he gave them, outside of the fouls, were productive! He grabbed five big offensive rebounds (which accounted for 35% of the Cougars’ missed shots while he was on the floor), blocked two shots and played a big part in keeping Mocs’ big man and former All-SOCON center, Jake Stephens, from shooting over 50% from two-point range. Lampten can play a big part of keeping Bacot off the glass and putting up big numbers…if he can stay on the floor for more than 15 minutes.

In the likely event he has foul trouble, they will rely heavily on some smaller and faster lineups which can at least be beneficial to keeping up the frantic pace that Coach Pat Kelsey’s teams are known for.

North Carolina did not necessarily look like the team that stormed their way to a national championship appearance in their opener. There are some edges to round out but I still don’t worry about their outlook and should still be one of the heavy favorites to win the whole thing this year. Charleston is coming off a big win against a solid, UTC squad that will contend in the SOCON but the match-up issues that Bacot presents, along with the Cougars’ issues with fouling (it’s not just Lampten, the team as a whole was 325th in the country last year in opponent free throw rate) are too much to keep them in this game.

Even if Charleston turns this into a track meet, I feel good about R.J. Davis and Caleb Love making a few threes each and dominating on that side of the ball and on the free throw line. It’ll simply be too much for Smith and company to keep up with.

Prediction: North Carolina 87, College of Charleston 66