You know the collegiate sports year is approaching when the schedules are released.
On Wednesday, UNC unveiled the non-conference portion of the basketball schedule for the 2024-25 season.
While some of the major games were already known or had been announced due to neutral court events, we now have the exact dates for these games, presented in a handy chart form:
Noteworthy points include:
The standout is the first UNC/Kansas matchup, scheduled as the second game of the season. This will be their first meeting since the 2022 National Championship game and the first time the Tar Heels have traveled to Lawrence since 1960. Back in the days of Frank McGuire, the Tar Heels last played in Lawrence—partly due to Dean Smith and Roy Williams’ reluctance to face their former team. With Hubert Davis now coaching, college basketball will see an exciting early-season powerhouse game.
Davis is using Roy Williams’ strategy of acclimating to Hawaiian time by scheduling a game against Hawaii before the Maui Invitational. The matchups for Maui haven’t been announced yet, but the field includes teams like two-time defending champion UConn, perennial contender Michigan State, and the Auburn Tigers. With only four games played before this, the new-look Tar Heels will need to adapt quickly.
A benefit of Maui’s schedule is that it occurs before Thanksgiving, giving the team time to return to Chapel Hill and prepare for Alabama as part of the ACC/SEC challenge. Hopefully, this time Alabama won’t have grad assistants yelling out plays from the other side.
December is relatively quieter, with only four more non-conference games and just one after Christmas. The bigger games—against Florida in Charlotte and UCLA at Madison Square Garden—lead into the Christmas break. The ACC will likely add at least one game during this period.
Overall, the Tar Heels face a challenging schedule with Kansas, a trip to Hawaii, the Maui Invitational, Alabama, likely at least one conference game, then Florida and UCLA before the ACC grind begins. This tough schedule helped them secure a one seed last year, and we’ll see if it works again this year.
The rest of the schedule will be released by the ACC at a later date. As reminded during the ACC Kickoff, we now have Stanford, Cal, and SMU to integrate along with the other 14 ACC teams. We know the opponents and locations, just not the dates. The ACC announced this in February:
Home/Away: Duke, NC State, Pitt
Home: Boston College, Cal, Georgia Tech, Miami, SMU, Stanford, Virginia
Away: Clemson, Florida State, Louisville, Notre Dame, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest
For this year, the Tar Heels avoid some of the more remote conference trips, only traveling to Tallahassee, Notre Dame, and Syracuse.
We’ll know the full extent of the schedule’s difficulty once the ACC announces the dates for these games.
