However we want to talk about the two televised exhibition games this UNC team has played already, it’s a novel feeling to be writing about a season opener when we’ve already seen the team. I’m not used to college sports having a preseason. That’s not a value judgment or anything, just an observation. With fans already having caught a glimpse of the 2025-26 edition of Tar Heel men’s basketball, the season officially begins on Monday, with Hubert Davis and his team hosting the Bears of Central Arkansas. Here are three things to look out for as the Dean Smith Center hosts its first official action of the fall:
1. Point Guard Duties
After the graduation of R.J. Davis and the transfer of Elliot Cadeau, it was obvious that the UNC staff was going to have to prioritize finding a new ballhandler for their team. On paper, they did a pretty decent job of addressing that need, finding Colorado point guard Kyan Evans through the transfer portal and adding two freshman combo guards in Derek Dixon and Isaiah Denis. In practice, it’s a little murkier. All three of them spent at least as much time playing on the ball as off it at their previous stops, which is to say that none of them really fit the bill of the kind of full-time lead guard that UNC was probably looking for. Each has shown at least flashes of a competent or better handle, passing vision, and ability to initiate offense, but flashes are only so much when you’re looking for a full game’s worth night in and night out. They’re all good players, and it’s very possible that there’s a point guard inside one or more of them waiting to be brought out with coaching and experience.
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Evans is the easy pick among the three for this to happen: not only is he the most experienced and the guy who’s started at the 1 so far, but in the two exhibitions, he’s looked like the player most consciously trying to be a point guard. Last year, he buttered his bread as a low-usage volume shooter who was consistently able to make the right play in a system that didn’t ask him to be overly creative. In his action in Carolina Blue, he’s looked like he’s trying to be a real creator, with his play looking a little tentative and bumpy because of it. That learning curve will be one to track both in this game and for the rest of the season.
All that said, early reports on Dixon are really positive as far as his comfort playing the 1 and the confidence he’s brought. He’s been compared to Coby White, including by White himself, for being a bigger guard who’s comfortable dribbling and can pull up and shoot, though he’s not the athlete White was. I went on an island predicting that Dixon would lead the Heels in bench minutes this season for a reason. I think he and Evans could each unlock the other, easing each other’s on-ball burden and allowing them to bring their deadliness as shooters to the party. Again, that dynamic will be one to watch in a game and early season where Davis is likely to be tinkering a fair bit with his lineups.
2. Havoc on Defense
Statistically, UNC had a pretty average defense last year. It ranked 47th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency per Kenpom, largely because the Heels limited three-point attempts and didn’t foul that much. Plus there was that stretch of five games in January to open conference play where opponents shot a combined 19% from distance that probably juiced those numbers a little. But it often felt worse, partly because of that team’s inconsistency and partly because a hallmark of Hubert Davis’ teams so far has been that even when they’re good at positional defense, they’re not making a lot of defensive plays. He’s never really had a rim protector and his guards haven’t gotten a lot of steals (and last year’s ballhandlers struggled to turn the steals they did get into fast break points because of their size and in some cases selfishness), and so opposing teams manage to get a lot of shots up — and more shots taken means more shots made, even when most of them might be reasonably defended. Seth Trimble so far has been kind of a poster boy for this. He’s an outstanding positional defender on the perimeter, but that usually manifests in a guard trying and failing to drive past him and then resetting the offense to try and attack somebody else, rather than him actually disrupting or ending an offensive possession. He forced turnovers and blocked shots at essentially the same rate as Elliot Cadeau, a much worse (though quite overhated, but that’s another discussion) perimeter defender, and had inconsistent timing contesting jump shots when they went up, most memorably as the victim of Stanford’s buzzer-beater in Chapel Hill.
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This year, the pieces at least look like they could make that change. Henri Veesaar is a legitimate rim protector, averaging better than 2 blocks per 40 minutes both his years in Arizona. Kyan Evans has racked up some nasty steals already in preseason. Caleb Wilson averaged nearly four steals + blocks (“stocks” in scouting lingo) per game in various competitions as a high school senior. Jarin Stevenson averaged more than 2 stocks per 40 for Alabama last year and memorably had R.J. Davis in jail in multiple matchups. Trimble has also looked a fair bit more disruptive so far this year than before. The easiest way to be a really good defense is to limit the number of balls that reach the rim: forcing turnovers and protecting the rim. Last year, UNC put up 80 shots to Elon’s 61 in their season opener, ripping 11 steals in a really exciting defensive performance. They were brought back down against Hawai’i, actually getting out-shot 57-54, and that proved to be a more accurate reflection of what they’d be defensively the rest of the season. If UNC can replicate that former performance, hopefully with a few more blocked shots given the team’s size, it’ll be a good sign (though clearly one that’ll need following up on) that this team’s defense can be genuinely great.
Bench Usage
Against Winston-Salem State on Friday, no Heel played more than 24 minutes and 10 played at least 12, even though it was an uncomfortable game at times. It was a good sign after Hubert Davis gave his non-point guard starters 71 out of 80 available minutes in the second half against BYU. Through a combination of his own inexperience and the roster situations he’s been dealt, Davis’ benches have not been able to produce much throughout his tenure in Chapel Hill past one or maybe two guys a year. On paper and as far as we’ve been able to see, this team doesn’t look like it will lack for options beyond whatever starting five Davis eventually settles on. Those 10 players who played at least 30% of the game against Winston-Salem don’t even include Luka Bogavac, who many expect to start on this team whenever he gets to play. Almost nobody ends up with a full 10-man rotation in college basketball, and Zayden High and James Brown are going to have to be better than they’ve shown so far to eat up some post minutes for Veesaar and Wilson. Early games like this against opponents who are in all likelihood going to be outmatched are the ones where you see what those guys can give you with the lights on, and hopefully a glimpse of the core that will power a team come conference play and beyond.
