Need to be convinced to watch the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team travel to Indianapolis on Sunday to take on the Indiana Hoosiers in the Tar Heels’ second of three preseason games?
I don’t blame you. The game will be broadcast on B1G+, for goodness sake. It won’t be easy to tune in, but here’s why you should.
Shared Ancient History
Hoosier and Tar Heel fans have been bumping shoulders in the stands for about as long as the sport of college basketball has existed. Both schools have been playing basketball at the collegiate level since the first decade of the twentieth century.
The two schools first played against each other in 1961, when Indiana won 76-70. Indiana has an all-time record of 1,968–1,144 (.632) as compared to North Carolina’s all-time record of 2,419–881 (.733). Indiana has won five NCAA tournaments. North Carolina has won six.
However, Indiana did beat North Carolina in the 1981 NCAA championship, and the Hoosiers are 10-6 vs. the Tar Heels all-time.
They’ve been playing basketball for over 230 years, collectively, but have only met sixteen times. Even if it’s just an exhibition, do you want to miss the seventeenth meeting?
Recent History
More recently, there is a lot about these programs that is so similar that if you squint, you wouldn’t know if you were looking at Crimson and Cream or Carolina Blue.
Both programs had multi-championship-winning Hall of Fame coaches in the 70s, 80s, and 90s (Bob Knight meet Dean Smith). Both programs’ most recent coach was a former player, hired for the 2021-22 season, who played under that Hall of Fame coach (Mike Woodson meet Hubert Davis).
Both fanbases did not enjoy the tenure of the aforementioned coaches (Hoosiers meet Carolina Family)*.
Both fanbases have spent years in a haze of malaise and disappointment, and this preseason game serves as a test for who might be blinking their eyes and twiddling their thumbs, about to wake up.
* I’d be ashamed if I didn’t note, however, that Davis won a lot more ballgames than Woodson, took a team to the national championship game, and won the ACC regular season in 2024. Mike Woodson only finished above .500 in the Big Ten once during his tenure. Tar Heel fans, are we spoiled rotten?
Coaching Future
Both fanbases now look to the future and are excited about what they see.
North Carolina is coached by Michael Malone, a coach Tar Heel fans know a lot about at this point, who seems to understand the importance of the Carolina Way while bringing a pro-ball perspective to recruitment and development in the modern college game.
Indiana is in its second year of the Darian DeVries era. DeVries only went 9-11 in conference play in his debut season with the Hoosiers, but he previously led the Drake Bulldogs to the NCAA tournament three times in six seasons as head coach and is widely considered a top new mind in college basketball.
Can Michael Malone bring the Tar Heels back to a team that makes deep runs into March?
Can Darian DeVries get the Hoosiers back to being a team that consistently goes dancing in March? If he does, can Indiana retain him and restore their Blue Blood status, or will he be looking for a bigger paycheck than Bloomington can afford?
Sunday’s contest is only a preseason exhibition in October, but it will broadcast the mood for the season ahead for these two college coaches, largely unproven in Power Four college basketball.
Don’t miss it.
Tune in.