Games with Kentucky, Texas, Wisconsin, and Michigan State (on an aircraft carrier - still think that is amazingly cool!) along with the usual challenging ACC slate highlight the 2011-12 UNC basketball schedule released on Wednesday.
UNC will earn some frequent-flier miles early with two trips to the Pacific time zone in November - to San Diego for the carrier game with Michigan State, and two weeks later, the Heels will travel to Las Vegas for two games (South Carolina and either Southern Cal or UNLV) in the iBN Sports Las Vegas Invitational.
Carolina returns home to face Wisconsin in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, followed by a trip to Lexington to play Kentucky. UNC then settles in for a school-record 9 straight home games, mostly against cupcakes, with a headliner against Texas thrown in for good measure.
The non-conference schedule has a reunion feel as Carolina visits Roy Williams’ hometown of Asheville to open UNC-Asheville’s new arena, while Appalachian State (coached by former UNC player Jason Capel) and Monmouth (coached by former UNC player King Rice, with Tar Heel teammates Brian Reese and Derrick Phelps on staff) will visit the Smith Center.
In the ACC, UNC has home-and-home games with Duke, NCSU, Miami, Maryland, and Virginia. Carolina will host BC, Georgia Tech (thank goodness no trip to Atlanta) and Clemson (The Streak is on the line again) in single games, while the Heels will travel to Wake, Florida State, and Virginia Tech. As THF pointed out upon reviewing the schedule, three of UNC’s five home-and-home opponents will be middle of the pack teams at best,
One quirk of the schedule is the 9-game home stand which is part of UNC playing 14 of its first 19 games at home. Carolina has its typical marquee games (MSU, Wisconsin, at UK and Texas) but two of those are at home and one on a neutral warship. UNC should begin the season ranked in the top 2 or 3 in the country by most every measure and an unusually home-friendly schedule should do little to derail that. The flip side is that four of the last six games are on the road, including at Duke and NCSU.
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+1 “…neutral warship…”
I actually like the last few games being on the road as it prepares everyone for the post season tournaments and hopefully a trip to Greensboro.
I really love this last little bit of Summer as football is about to start and we can almost taste basketball season as well.
Hope I don’t jinx it but got notification today that our Final Four ticket application has been accepted! We are SUPER excited and can’t wait to get to NO! Go HEELS!
I actually laughed out loud at neutral warship
Two trips to Cali? I hope Roy can bring back some recruits!!
I kid…
I kid…
I hope we get SoCal-
Only 5 games listed as 9pm EST or later? That’s pretty good for the Heels. At least 4 ACC games during the day! Maybe the world really is going to end in 2012.
A lot of TBAs, but I doubt anyone would stay up until midnight to watch Long Beach State or Monmouth.
Lots of ESPNU listed - I don’t get that (i.e. I am not going to pay for a higher tier of cable to get one channel), and can’t get them on the radio, so I’ll have a light schedule this year.
They’re moving a lot of ACC games to ESPNU (State got shafted a couple of ACC games, too, I see - haven’t had time to look at other schools), so I guess not enough people are paying to watch riveting preseason basketball like UNC vs ASU on overpriced cable channels. They need to up the ante. Might backfire.
Where is the list of 2011-12 radio affiliates? Maybe Asheville will get a better deal this year?
I could listen to the UNCA feed of the game, but I can’t stand that Nasal Python announcer they have.
This looks like the magical season, with a down ACC and a UNC team that is ready to dominate (even with MacDonald’s unfortunate ACL). We’re going to be welcoming a lot of new coaches to the ACC with a 20+ point beatdown, and getting some of the others fired.
^ESPNU games are a result of ACC’s new 12-year deal with ESPN. Sorry.
List of radio affiliates:
http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/unc/genrel/auto_pdf/2011-12/misc_non_event/THSN2012.pdf
CM:
It’s only one trip to Cali and I think I will request that Navy Seals keep Roy Williams under secure guard at all times so they can stop that man before he recruits in California again…
Six Twitter posts in a row on the same topic - New THF record just like the nine game home stand for UNCBB, coincidence, I think not.
The very first thought I had on the Women’s basketball hire was heir apparent. It’s hard to imagine that would be the case but Hatchell has done a great job creating UNC coaches from assistants. Maybe the promise of finding her a head coaching gig was more than Duke was willing to do. It’s a really odd situation to be sure.
If you get a chance, drop by the renovated tarheelblue website and watch Roy’s take on the schedule. Love how he ignored Duke, I thought he might mention them but he didn’t. The website is much improved as well and the rage that I felt when pulling it up in the past has gone. We are no longer the “lowermybills” of college sports related websites.
“We are no longer the “lowermybills” of college sports related websites.”
Thanks for the chuckle, badbadleroybrown. So true.
It’s a post heavy day for me but I was on reesenews today and saw this little video about the Rat and that made me think of Rath, probably enjoying Hawaii at present, so here’s the show. They do some fine work at Reese from time to time, check it out when you have exhausted your other UNC news sources. I have noticed that they aren’t generally linked from Tar Heel Times for some reason but we can’t have everything, that’s for Nnn Ceee State fans.
http://reesenews.org/2010/11/01/the-rathskeller-returns/416/
Check out Dick Vitale’s 5 All-Gold Teams for the coming year. UNC has a player on teams 1 through 4. DookieV has spoken!
http://espn.go.com/espn/dickvitale/story/_/id/6878151/all-solid-gold-teams-2011-12
Can’t stand to see so many games go to pay TV. We don’t have cable or satellite and don’t want them. Is there any pay-per-view or subscription we can get just to watch UNC basketball?
I sure hope I don’t jinx anybody, but I’m a little concerned about a game on a carrier. They shift slightly, not noticeable in calm situations but if a player goes up, then comes down to a floor which is slightly higher (or lower) than when he left, his landing may be off and who knows what might happen.
The carrier will be in a protected berth, not on the open sea. There will barely be any motion to the ocean to speak of, so I don’t think you have much to worry about. If there is inclement weather causing waves they won’t be able to have the (open air) game anyway.
^ They will move it to a hanger below the flight deck in case of inclement weather.
Did someone say inclement weather?
Here it comes for us Eastern NC’ers-
@ linm,
Try this:
http://www.lateralsports.com/
Jay Bilas recommended it on Twitter a while back. It’s a website that will list anything that’s available online for you and where to find it. Some, like ACC, won’t be free, but cheap if you buy the whole month. Others are free, like ESPN3, which shows virtually everything that’s been on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.
Anyone have a resource for the schedule in Excel or some other format importable to Outlook? Who knows when TarHeelBlue will update…