We made it, ladies and gentlemen: the 2026-27 Carolina basketball season is officially here. Our beloved Tar Heels will open the regular season against Western Carolina tomorrow night in the Dean Smith Center. This is one of a few games where the Heels can try to work out some more things before having to deal with Power Four competition, but that isn’t to say that they shouldn’t respect Western Carolina. Given what happened against Charlotte last week, no opponent should be taken likely, regardless of what type of game it is (yes, we all know it was exhibition, but it shouldn’t have even been close).
That said, let’s look at three keys to tomorrow night’s game against the Catamounts.
Will Matt Able be available?
One player that was noticeably missing from the Heels’ too-close-for-comfort win over Charlotte is NC State transfer, Matt Able. As of right now, we haven’t heard why he didn’t play from the school, but reports have started coming out saying that it is an unknown injury rather than a general coach’s decision.
After a disappointing performance against USC, Able showed off some of his shooting prowess against Indiana, which gave Carolina fans a lot of optimism about the perimeter situation. But now the questions is whether or not this mysterious injury is mild or serious, and if it is serious, that would be a huge problem for Michael Malone. We’ll see what the injury report looks like before the game, because while this game isn’t against a top 25 team, this team isn’t anywhere near gelled yet, and Able needs as many reps as possible.
What do regular season rotations look like?
During preseason play, Malone was unsurprisingly very liberal with his rotations. While the starting lineup was the same each game that his starters were available — Able’s absence being the exception — we regularly saw at least 10 players take the court. Does everyone that we saw get some kind of minutes? Does Malone abide by the thing that happens in college basketball where he rolls out tighter rotations? A lot of that depends on if he likes what he sees in practice.
What seems almost certain is that we should see Isaiah Denis, Maxi Adams, Jaydon Young, and Alexandros Samodurov quite a bit, but the mileage may vary. Perhaps more interesting will be who sees the floor the most, and I’d have to imagine that it will be Adams out of the players named. While he is obviously a freshman still figuring things out, his talent was apparent during preseason play, and it’d be surprising to see him not be one of the first off the bench. Looking forward to seeing what Malone has in store for us tomorrow night.
Will turnovers prove to be a long-term issue?
In the interest of full disclosure, everything that is about to be said can easily be applied to the rebounding issue as well. But turnovers were a big problem during preseason play, and in the case of the game against Charlotte, UNC gave the ball away 14 times, which led to the 49ers scoring 23 points. It’s one thing to give the ball up, but it’s another thing for the other team to be able to capitalize, and that’s a huge problem.
It’s fair to wonder if Terrence Brown and Neo Avdalas will be good enough facilitators to help limit some of these issues, but the problem is pretty spread out. Five players coughed up the ball twice against Charlotte, two of whom were Sayon Keita and Maxi Adams. What it boils down to is that the entire team needs to take better care of the basketball, and they need to figure it out soon. These first three games look like the issue won’t cost them, but again, look at what almost happened last Tuesday.
