Wins are needed for North Carolina as the Tar Heels are now into ACC play and don’t have much room for error. That makes the Tar Heels’ game Saturday at Notre Dame quite big and one the Heels need.

UNC is coming off an 83-70 loss at Louisville which closed out the Tar Heels 13-1 over the final four minutes of the game. The Fighting Irish are coming off an 11-point loss at Georgia Tech and have dropped five of their last eight games after opening the season 4-0.

The Irish have some close losses to good teams. The dropped an overtime game to Rutgers by a point, lost to Creighton by four points, and lost to Houston by 11 points.

Irish guard and leading scorer Markus Burton has not played since late November and it’s unknown if he will be available Saturday. He leads Notre Dame in scoring with 18.2 points per game.

UNC and the Fighting Irish tip at noon a Purcell Pavilion.

UNC is 8-6 overall and 1-1 in the ACC. Notre Dame is 7-6 and 1-1.

Here are 5 Keys for UNC to beat Notre Dame:

Carolina was quite poor defensively in the loss at Louisville on Wednesday and has been against all of the quality teams it’s faced. Notre Dame on the road is borderline quality and should be a challenge for the Heels.

The Irish’s offensive metrics aren’t bad at all. KenPom has them at No. 62 in offensive efficiency, No. 69 in effective field goal percent, No. 73 in 3-point percent (36.1%), No. 94 inside the arc at 54.2%, and they make teams guard, as they are No. 295 in offensive tempo.

Considering how quickly the Heels get lost on defense, don’t switch well, mishandle being screened, don’t rotate as they should, and don’t close out consistently on perimeter shooters, one might say this is a solid task Saturday.

Ian Jackson has led the Heels in scoring the last three games totaling 73 points. RJ Davis is RJ Davis. But the Tar Heels need another scorer. If Seth Trimble can play, he should be that guy, but if he misses a third consecutive game, points need to come from another source. But who?

Great question, and there is no obvious answer. Elliot Cadeau has been in a slump for six weeks. Drake Powell isn’t a big scorer yet. Cade Tyson? He hasn’t shown it against power conference teams (just one FG in those nine games). The bigs? Probably not.

It’s uncertain from whom the scoring will come, but it’s needed for the Heels to get a win.

The Tar Heels were shooting 37.6% from 3-point when they returned from Hawaii, which included the first seven games of the season. In the last seven contests, the Heels are shooting 26.4% having attempted four more threes a game than through the first seven.

In fact, in UNC’s last three losses, all on this recent seven-game span, it’s shooting 14-for-72 (19.4%) from beyond the arc.

Needless to say, UNC would greatly benefit from shooting at least moderately well from the outside against a team rated 64th in the nation in 3-point defense, limiting opponents to 30.2%.

With the Irish posting just a 7-6 record, students not in town, and the football team taking all of the attention away from basketball, there’s a good chance Purcell Pavilion is not full and doesn’t have a great buzz Saturday.

So, the Tar Heels likely will have to generate some of their own energy. Not that they’ve proven to feed off of true road crowds yet, but this isn’t a vocal or fiery team, and a few thousand empty seats in a game that may not have the Heels all that jazzed up could be an issue for a club that doesn’t always play with great energy.

If this is a close game, the Tar Heels must show they can close again. They did it against UCLA a couple of weeks ago, and that was a nice victory. But they haven’t done it most recently at Louisville and against Florida just more than two weeks ago.

The pace will be slower than usual so there won’t be as many possessions as typical UNC games. And if the Heels continue having some of the same struggles on both ends of the floor, this probably will be a close game entering the last 6ish minutes. So, how does Carolina close this time?

Drake Powell said the Heels don’t raise they intensity level in close final segments when opponents do. Notre Dame certainly will, but will the Tar Heels do so as well?