After an unscheduled weekend off because of Hurricane Florence, North Carolina gets back into game-week mode preparing for a visit from Pittsburgh on Saturday for a noon kickoff.

The Tar Heels are 0-2 and Pitt is 2-1 coming off a 24-19 home victory over Georgia Tech. The Panthers’ other results are a 33-7 win over FCS Albany and a 51-6 home loss to Penn State. This will be Pitt’s first road game of the season and UNC’s first home game.

Conventional wisdom suggest the time away may have been a positive or the Tar Heels. The 24-17 loss at California, in which UNC’s offense didn’t register a first down until its eighth possession, and a 41-19 loss at East Carolina, appeared to take a great deal of wind out of the program.

Head coach Larry Fedora fielded questions about the condition of his program and job status, and the mood of the fan base with respect to Fedora took a giant leap in negativity after the blowout loss in Greenville.

But, not taking on nationally ranked Central Florida, and subsequently avoiding what many figured would have been another lopsided defeat, and instead getting a beatable Pitt team in Kenan Stadium could be a reset to the season.

With the regular season now trimmed to 11 games, it also means the nine players levied four-game suspensions for their roles in Show Gate must sit just three games, thus Pitt is the last game seven of them will miss.

Positives for this program have been few and far between over the last 21 months, so that counts as a victory of sorts, and Fedora will take it.

Now, Carolina sets its attention on the Panthers, who are 0-5 versus UNC since joining the ACC. Each game, however, has been decided by a touchdown or less including last season’s 34-31 UNC win on a Thursday night at Pitt.

That happens to be Carolina’s only win over a Power 5 team since Nov. 5, 2016. In all, UNC is 4-14 in the 18 games since defeating Georgia Tech. In addition to Pitt, the Tar Heels have defeated Old Dominion and FCS members The Citadel and Western Carolina.

This week gives UNC a chance to restart its season, to carve out a new course, one very different from the B-line the Heels appeared to be making toward the ACC cellar, which would have come with some uncomfortable realities for the program.

Kickoff is technically set for 12:20 and the game will air on the ACC Network.