NCAA Basketball: Ranking most interesting 2024 Maui Invitational openers

3. North Carolina vs. Dayton

DaRon Holmes II is no longer at Dayton and college basketball fans are stuck wondering what could've been had the big man been in Maui this November. Nevertheless, the Flyers fight on.

With Koby Brea also off to Kentucky, this is a team that will rely heavily on some transfers, particularly Nate Santos and Posh Alexander. While the former was on the Flyers last year, Alexander will be trying to click with his third program in as many years after stops at St. John's and Butler.

While the Atlantic 10 is a solid conference, it's not the ACC, or the Big East, or the Big Ten. It will be interesting to see how the likes of Santos, Alexander, and former Ohio State big man Zed Key match up against a major conference foe.

North Carolina will head to Maui largely untested. Three of the four games on its schedule before the tournament should be laughers, the exception being a fairly daunting road trip to Lawrence and the Kansas Jayhawks (heretofore known as the Roy Williams Game).

Know who doesn't need the test? RJ Davis. The guard is the best player in this year's field and one of the best players in the country. The reigning ACC Player of the Year averaged 21.2 points per game and should make life a nightmare for the Flyers, though seeing Alexander try to swipe the ball out of Davis' hands could be a fun one-on-one story.

These teams last played in April 2010 when they were vying for a title - an NIT title, to be specific. Dayton won that game by 11.