IOWA CITY, IA – Looking at Iowa’s roster can be pretty eye-opening if your lean on the college basketball front lies in Chapel Hill.

On one side is a North Carolina team with six freshmen in it’s 10-man rotation in addition to a sophomore, a junior who missed much of his freshman year due to an injury, and two seniors, one of whom didn’t corral a spot in the rotation until last season.

On the other side is a Hawkeyes’ team that includes eight players who’ve redshirted in college and nine players of legal drinking age. The average age of Iowa’s starting five is 22.7 years as opposed to 20.2 for UNC. Five of Carolina’s rotation players are closer to being 18 than they are 20.

Young men versus grown men. Tuesday night’s result: Iowa 93, UNC 80.

Last week at the Maui Invitational in Asheville, NC, the Tar Heels faced a grizzled Texas team in the championship game. The Longhorns included ballyhooed freshman Greg Brown, whom Carolina heavily courted, but also had five starters back from a team that won 19 games and was headed to the NCAA Tournament a year ago before the event was cancelled.

Texas beat UNC on a shot at the buzzer by a senior who turns 23 next month over the out-stretched arms of a just-turned 19-year-old.

UNC is young and is playing some of the older and best teams in the nation. Needless to say, the lessons learned over the last week-plus have been invaluable.

“Most of the teams we’re playing, like Texas and Iowa, they have a lot of veteran players,” UNC freshman big man Day’Ron Sharpe said, following Carolina’s loss to the third-ranked Hawkeyes on Tuesday night at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. “We’re young and stuff, so when we play against them, we’re just learning college basketball more and more how to play.”

Learning how to play is an all-encompassing thing, especially for a group as young as the Tar Heels. What’s interesting for their potential down the road is that in both aforementioned games the Heels faced 16-point deficits in the first halves: 32-16 versus Texas and 25-9 at Iowa. But the young Heels roared back in each contest, showing a metal that will help them leap from their current period of adjustment to whatever it is they become by February.

Yet, when asked about the deficits and what can be done to avoid them, senior forward Garrison Brooks didn’t mention anything about UNC’s youth and inexperience, he went right to the chalk board, so to speak.

“Not turn the ball over, that'd be the best thing we could do,” he said. “I think getting shots is the most important thing and we haven't been getting shots how we want to.”

Carolina turned it over 10 times leading to 11 points in the first half versus Texas and 18 more times Tuesday night leading to 23 Iowa points. It allowed the Longhorns and Hawkeyes 38 combined points off turnovers overall. Taking care of the ball and playing smarter are things that will come with time, especially from a backcourt that starts two freshmen who turned 19 over the last two months. That's what Brooks and Roy Williams are preaching.

There’s no demand that the Heels get older, because nobody can speed that up, but there is a mandate to play better. And given what the Heels have learned so far, development should be expected, and perhaps even at a decent clip.

“You can’t talk about them being freshmen anymore,” Williams said. “We’ve played five games, we’ve had 36 practices, I think you’ve got to stop turning the ball over. I think it’s been, probably of all the things, I’d say the turnovers have been the biggest thing that’s been a negative for us.”

And games versus grown men who are also pretty darn good will help in this process, too.