9/13/2016 basketball Edit

10 Things To Know About The Hoops Slate

THI takes a look at 10 interesting things about Carolina's 2016-17 basketball schedule. (Bruce Young, THI)

Andrew Jones • TarHeelIllustrated

Publisher

Andrew Jones has covered sports for 26 years, including all major college & professional sports for daily newspapers & national sites. He's done radio and TV & is entering his seventh year at THI.

The ACC finally released the conference basketball schedule for this upcoming season Monday, and with that we now know when and where the Tar Heels will play through the ACC Tournament in Brooklyn.

The nonconference portion was released about six weeks ago, so we already know who the Heels were playing outside of the ACC, but Monday’s release completes the schedule, which is no doubt challenging, but also quite manageable given the Heels’ experience, depth and talent.

Here are 10 things to take away from the basketball schedule:

*The Heels are going to accumulate some frequent flyer miles before they jump into ACC play with trips to New Orleans (Tulane), Indiana, Las Vegas (Kentucky) and they have four games in Hawaii.

*The Heels have just two home games over the first month of the season, with Chattanooga (Nov. 13) and Long Beach State (Nov. 15) coming over a 52-hour stretch.

*Carolina must visit its two biggest rivals in consecutive games, traveling to Duke on Feb. 9 and N.C. State on Feb. 15. Interestingly, the Heels are off over the weekend that falls in between those games.

*Carolina and Virginia meet twice but don’t play until Feb 18 in Chapel Hill, but they meet again 9 days later in Charlottesville.

*The Tar Heels have a 27-day stretch in the middle of conference play in which they won’t leave the Research Triangle. After visiting Miami on Jan. 28, UNC doesn’t play outside of the Triangle again until a trip to Pittsburgh on Feb. 25. In between, the Heels host Pitt, Notre Dame, Virginia and Louisville while visiting Duke and N.C. State. So even though the Heels will sleep in their own beds for four straight weeks, the teams they will face make it the most daunting 6-game stretch of the season.

*The Jan. 3 game at Clemson will be the Tigers’ first ACC home game in their newly renovated Littlejohn Coliseum.

*12 of UNC’s last 16 regular season games are in the state of North Carolina, with only trips to Boston College, Miami, Pittsburgh and Virginia its games outside of the Old North State. This will lessen the grind of the season and somewhat allow the team to be a bit more rested than usual heading into the postseason.

*The ACC Tournament will be at Barcaly’s Center in Brooklyn, the first time the event will be hosted above the Mason-Dixon Line. Carolina clobbered UCLA at Barclays last December.

*The Heels are slated to play games in 10 different states and in four different time zones.

*The Tar Heels play both Virginia and Duke twice over the last 23 days of the regular season.