Cole Anthony, we hardly knew ye. If any North Carolina fans thought the highly regarded freshman might stay for two years, they don’t now after Anthony torched Notre Dame for 34 points, the most ever by a player in his Carolina debut, en route to a 76-65 Tar Heel win.

The home opener wasn’t easy though as Carolina trailed the Irish with 13 minutes to play. That’s when Anthony took over the game with everyone in light blue’s approval.

Anthony drilled a three from the top of the key to tie the score at 46-all and less than a minute later popped in a jumper off a screen to put the Tar Heels on top for good.

A 22-6 run over five minutes of play, highlighted by 11 Anthony points and a big three by Andrew Platek from the right wing, allowed the Heels to take control of the game. Platek also delivered a fast break alley-oop pass to freshman Armando Bacot, who dunked it for a 65-52 lead with just over eight minutes to go.

The largest lead of the game came at 73-57 with four minutes left after back-to-back threes by Anthony.

“Cole was pretty impressive in the second half,” UNC coach Roy Williams said nonetheless lamenting that he can’t be the only player to make a shot and get a rebound.

“We have to have other guys to step up,” he added.

Junior Garrison Brooks, the only returning starter, scored 10 points and added nine rebounds in 39 minutes of play but Coach Williams said he “didn’t have a great game.” He was the only other Tar Heel in double figures.

Anthony bested Rashad McCant’s 28 first-game points and is the first Tar Heel freshman to score at least 30 points and haul in at least 10 rebounds since Tyler Hansbrough had 40 points and 10 rebounds against Georgia Tech in 2006.

Anthony said it was “an honor” to be part of Tar Heel lore but he added that “it’s a long season and we have a lot more work to do.”

He was upset that he turned the ball over four times and that he didn’t defend as well as he could.

No Tar Heel defended much late in the first half when Notre Dame went on a 12-2 run over less than three minutes’ time to go up 28-23. While the Heels led by as many as nine in the first half, they trailed the Irish 31-30 at the break.

Prentiss Hubb led the Fighting Irish with 22 points.

It was the first time the Tar Heels started a season with a conference game since 1967. The 1-0 Tar Heels travel to UNC-Wilmington Friday night.

For more on the game, along with a box score, please click here.

With eight new faces on the UNC basketball team for the 2019-2020 season, who knows what’s going to happen? Coach Roy Williams certainly re-loaded in the offseason with grad transfers and top recruits but will the players – new and old – gel into a cohesive team by March? That’s the mystery.

The talent is there to win an ACC regular season title, an ACC tournament title and an NCAA tournament title but with so much youth and pieced-together parts, it would seem unlikely that the Heels can pull it off.

Of course, when the Tar Heels lost seniors Luke Maye, Cam Johnson and Kenny Williams, and transfer Seventh Woods, along with early NBA defectors Coby White and Nassir Little (Little should have stayed), Carolina fans were bracing for a below-par season.

But when the Tar Heels landed a pair of highly-regarded transfers in scoring guard Christian Keeling and forward Justin Pierce, the pieces started to fall into place.
The addition of likely one-and-dones Cole Anthony, a magician who plays guard, and Armando Bacot, a big demolition man who plays forward, set the Carolina universe ablaze at the possibilities.

Only 6-foot-9 junior Garrison Brooks returns as a starter and significant scorer from last year’s team so the additions were imperative to compete with the Dukes and Louisvilles of the world. While he led the team in field goal percentage and scored in double figures 12 times, Brooks is primarily a defensive stopper.

Expectations of Anthony, Carolina’s new point guard, as a scorer are through the roof (or the ceiling). There is talk about potentially not just being the nation’s freshman of the year but the player of the year. That’s pretty high praise but also something that cannot be relied upon.

With leadership from Brooks and senior Brandon Robinson and progression from guard/swing man Leaky Black, this could be a special group.

There were chemistry issues back in the day when Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace stepped into significant roles as freshman for a team that was laden with upper classmen who saw their minutes diminish. That shouldn’t happen with this team as only Brooks played significant minutes last year.

While chemistry will ultimately tell the tale for the Tar Heels, the difference may well be Leaky Black. The 6-8 sophomore showed so much promise last season even though he missed 13 games with a sprained ankle. He has the size, speed and tools to do just about anything on the court. He can score (including threes), rebound, dish the ball off, steal, play tough defense and do it all with panache. While some compare him to Theo Pinson, if he stays four years, I suspect he will be better because of his ability to score.

With five players 6-9 or taller, Coach Williams figures to see a lot of his scoring coming in the paint this season. Brooks and Bacot figure to be the primary beneficiaries of the emphasis while 6-11 Sterling Manley (if he can get healthy) and 6-10 Brandon Huffman getting in on the action as well.

In addition to Manley’s health woes, Robinson has been slowed with a preseason injury as have solid, if not spectacular, junior guard Andrew Platek, four-star freshman guard Anthony Harris and three-star freshman guard Jeremiah Francis. All could be contributors before the end of the season.

Per usual, Carolina has a tough non-conference schedule (Gonzaga, UCLA, Ohio State, Alabama and Iowa State or Michigan) and will no doubt lose two or threes games before the ACC schedule gets into full swing in January as the players settle into their roles.

Duke, even without Zion, is considered the top team in the ACC per the basketball writers. Last year’s national champion Virginia Cavaliers lose a lot of personnel and don’t figure to be a top three team. UNC, Duke and Louisville should be the top three teams.

This mysterious UNC team, full of unknowns, could very well be a contender come ACC Tournament and NCAA Tournament time. I’m predicting a 32-8 campaign with the Tar Heels falling in the ACC Tournament final and catching fire in the NCAA Tournament before bowing out, barely, in the national semi-finals.

While this will be a season like no other for Carolina, with all the changes in personnel, it should be another highly satisfying one for Tar Heel fans.

It was a team win, a team blowout. Fourteen North Carolina players scored, with six in double figures, as the Tar Heels wore out Tennessee Tech 108-58 in Chapel Hill.

With the game in control after a 17-2 run that put the Heels up by 25 in the first half, the largest cheers came late in the game with the subs in. Freshman Leaky Blake drained a three from the left corner to get the Heels within a point of the century mark. And then Brandon Huffman slammed home a one-handed dunk to make it 101-54 to send the crowd into a frenzy.

Local Bojangles stores offer a buy one, get one free biscuit on days after the Tar Heels score 100 points. For some unknown reason, that really fires up the fans. They also like to see rarely used players score. Walker Miller scored on a half hook and K.J. Smith, son of Tar Heel great Kenny Smith, went in for a fastbreak dunk to finish up the scoring.

The player of the game may have been a player who wasn’t one of the six in double figures. Seventh Woods scored just seven but he dished out eight assists and didn’t commit an turnover.

“We’ve got a lot of guys who can score,” Woods said. “If I get them the ball, I have a good chance at getting assists.”

It was the no turnovers that fired up UNC coach Roy Williams, who mentioned it early in his news conference.

But Coach Williams expected a big win. “We’re more blessed so we should win this kind of game,” he said of the game against 0-4 Golden Eagles. “But I’m pleased with the way we played.”

For more on the game and a box score, please click here.

North Carolina, already up by double figures early, hit 14 of its last 18 shots in the first half to build a 26-point halftime lead and went on to coast to a 90-72 win over Stanford at home. (11/12)

The Tar Heels never trailed as they got off to a 7-0 early with Kenny Williams, Carolina’s senior sharpshooter who had not scored in the first two games, hitting a three-point shot.

After Carolina freshman Nassir Little sank a 15-footer to put the Heels up 22-11 niway through the half, Stanford never got the deficit to single digits.

Up 33-20, UNC went on a 19-6 run to close out the half in control 52-26. The run was highlighted by a high lob by Seventh Woods that was thrown in powerfully by Little and a nifty give-and-go where Cam Johnson scored on a pass from Williams.

The Heels shot a blistering 60 percent in the first half while holding a cold-shooting Cardinal to 35 percent. But in the second half, the shooting reversed as Carolina managed just 39 percent while Stanford shot 57 percent.

The second half, which saw Stanford outscore Carolina by eight points, left a bad taste in UNC coach Roy Williams mouth.

For more on that and for a box score, please click here.