Great teams find ways to win ugly games, and that’s certainly what Carolina did at Kentucky on Tuesday.
The Tar Heels will now look to carry that momentum into a matchup with Georgetown on Sunday. With just one NCAA Tournament appearance in the past 10 seasons, the Hoyas are nowhere near the powerhouse they were decades ago, and they currently sit at #88 in KenPom and #114 in NET. Still, this isn’t a team Carolina can mail it in against.
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Georgetown is led by third-year head coach Ed Cooley, who previously spent 12 seasons at Providence. Cooley’s Friars were a regular tournament team and made it as far as the Sweet 16 in 2022, which helped Cooley earn Naismith Coach of the Year honors. Providence and Carolina faced each other in the tournament twice during Cooley’s tenure, with the Friars nearly upsetting the Tar Heels in a 2014 first-round matchup before UNC won a bit more decisively in the 2016 second round.
Providence had been a bottom feeder before Cooley’s arrival, and he seems to be in the process of turning Georgetown around too. The Hoyas posted their best record in six years last season and advanced to the quarterfinals of the inaugural College Basketball Crown. They come to Chapel Hill with a 6-2 record and a notable win over Clemson (79-74 at home on Nov. 15). Both of their losses came in the ESPN Events Invitational last week: 84-79 in overtime to Dayton and 78-65 to Miami.
Georgetown hasn’t been at full strength since its game against Clemson; the program announced a few days after that game that 7-foot-1 center Vince Iwuchukwu would miss six to eight weeks following an undisclosed medical procedure. Iwuchukwu averaged 11.8 points, 4 rebounds and 2 blocks off the bench in the Hoyas’ first four games. Carolina will still have to contend with a 7-footer in starting center Julius Halaifonua, who’s averaging 8.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 0.8 blocks. Halaifonua has accumulated at least three fouls in all but one of Georgetown’s games and has fouled out twice, so it would be smart for the Tar Heels to try to force him to the bench early. If they succeed, they’ll only have even more of a size advantage; the Hoyas’ other two frontcourt starters, Caleb Williams (12.8 PPG, 5.9 RPG) and Isaiah Abraham (6.1 PPG, 3 RPG), are both 6-foot-7.
Georgetown’s biggest strength is its backcourt, which features a pair of veteran guards in KJ Lewis (16.6 PPG, 6 RPG, 3.1 APG, 2.5 SPG) and Malik Mack (16.5 PPG, 3.4 RPG, 4.6 APG, 1.3 SPG). Lewis was teammates with Henri Veesaar at Arizona for the past two seasons before transferring to Georgetown, while Mack is in his second season with the Hoyas after spending his freshman year at Harvard. Both of these guys are solid 3-point shooters (Lewis is hitting 34.8% and Mack 38.5%) who are capable of taking over the game: Lewis scored a game-high 26 points against Clemson (nobody else had more than 16), and Mack put up a game-high 24 against Dayton (he also scored a career-high 37 in Georgetown’s win over Washington State at the College Basketball Crown last season). Williams shouldn’t be overlooked in either of those categories, either, as he tied for the game-high with 23 points against Miami and is shooting 40.6% on threes.
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As a team, Georgetown has done an excellent job taking care of the basketball, averaging 8.6 turnovers–tied for the fourth-fewest in Division I. Carolina will need to lock in defensively to get the Hoyas out of sync and prevent their backcourt from getting hot. If they can do that while maximizing their size advantage in the frontcourt, this should be a very winnable matchup.
