The Preseason Premier: North Carolina vs. USC
Greensboro, N.C. — First Horizon Coliseum
Friday, Oct. 8, 7 p.m.
TV: ACC Network (Kevin Fitzgerald, Randolph Childress)
Quoteables
“As a competitor, you always want to win. But for me, the three exhibition games are an opportunity to find out who the hell we are. … Each one of those games will allow us an opportunity to look within, try some things, get it on film, clean things up, and hopefully we’ll make positive strides and improvements from one game to the other.” — UNC coach Michael Malone
“We felt like an area we had to get better at was retaining really good players, and I think that we’ve done that with Rodney (Rice) and Jacob (Cofie) and Alijah (Arenas) … we were able to get three McDonald’s All-Americans, we were able to get what we feel is a good competitive portal [class].” — USC coach Eric Musselman
Pregame Notes
First Look at UNC: North Carolina’s trip to the once-Greensboro Coliseum will offer the first glimpse of the Tar Heels under Malone. , and are the lone scholarship returners from the 2025-26 season as UNC added five transfers, three high school freshmen and two international standouts to fill out its roster. South Dakota transfer will not suit up for UNC .
Key Tar Heel newcomers , and will be tasked with the Trojans’ talented tandem of guards. Brown was a prolific scorer at Utah, Able a three-point specialist at NC State, and Avdalas is a unique playmaker as a 6-9 point forward at Virginia Tech. Malone is banking on all three taking big steps forward this season in their development…