Maybe the first day of the college basketball season isn’t exactly like a birthday for fans, but since the first two days of the NCAA tournament are like Christmas, you’ll just have to go with me on this one.

There won’t be a game preview for tonight’s season opener, as work has unfortunately pulled me away from Austin the last few days for meetings. My flight back actually doesn’t land until 35 minutes before tip tonight, so with no airline delays and help from the traffic gods, I may be in the building by the U12 or U8 of the first half. Speaking of which, a special thanks to the UT soccer team for earning an NCAA bid and necessitating the 30-minute delay to tonight’s tip-off.

Enjoy the game tonight, and we’ll see you here tomorrow for the post-mortem. Or, if you’re one of the LRT Twitter followers, we’ll see you for the usual in-game updates whenever I actually reach the Drum. Here’s to an exciting season!

The Texas Longhorns survived their first road test by the skin of their teeth when they knocked off the Temple Owls in an overtime thriller in Philadelphia on December 7th. Tonight’s road game will be a challenge of a completely different caliber for the young Horns, as the North Carolina Tar Heels not only represent a significant step up in competition, but also bring an extra 15,000 fans.

While Ken Pomeroy only gives Texas a 13% chance to win, the Horns can still prove quite a bit even if they don’t pull off an upset. They competed with an NCAA-caliber team when taking BYU down to the wire, so another solid performance against one of the top teams in the nation will prove that the Longhorns can be competitive in a stacked Big 12 Conference this season.

Numbers to know

Like the Longhorns, the Tar Heels excel at beating their opponents down the court. That reliance on fast break points is especially evident when you look at their two big wins in contrast to their two surprising losses. The Tar Heels scored a combined 26 fast-break points in victories over Kentucky and Michigan State. In a home loss to Belmont and a road loss at UAB, the Heels managed just four combined fast-break points.

That’s not to say that UNC can only score when they are in transition or on the secondary break. In half-court sets, the Heels again mirror the Longhorns with a strong interior presence. UNC is only an average shooting team, with an effective field-goal rate of 50.1%. However, they reclaim more than 37% of their missed shots to extend possessions and get second-chance points. Further underscoring the important of points in the paint for Carolina is the fact that they take 84.1% of their shots inside the arc, a distribution that is actually the highest in all of Division I hoops.

Carolina’s interior strength stretches to the other end of the floor, as well. They allow opponents to shoot just 42% inside the arc, a mark that ranks 22nd nationally. However, they do send foes to the line with some regularity, giving 4.4 free-throw attempts for every 10 field goals. For a Texas team that does not shoot the ball well at the line, that’s not something that will be easy to exploit.

Finally, it must be noted that a big part of Carolina’s success in transition is due to their ability to force mistakes. The Heels have the 30th-best defensive turnover rate in D-I, causing their opponents to cough it up on 21.8% of their possessions. Texas is certainly not as turnover-prone as it was last season, but the team has gone through some bouts of sloppy play this season.

Who to watch

Guard Marcus Paige (No. 5) is the one who makes everything work for Carolina. He’s on the floor for more than 35 minutes per game and leads the team with more than 19 points. Although Paige is the top scorer and takes more than 25% of the team’s shots, he is also its best playmaker, dishing out more than four dimes per game for an assist rate of just over 22%. On a team that is fairly awful from long range, Paige is also its only three-point threat for the moment, having made 37.5% of his 56 tries.

Inside, sophomore Brice Johnson (No. 11) is coming into his own after having a hard time finding a true role last year. With the Heels settling on a four-guard look last season, Johnson saw the floor for only about 26% of the team’s minutes. Now, he’s firmly entrenched in the starting lineup and has the highest usage rate on the team. Johnson is a rebounding machine on both ends of the floor, and his 8.3% block rate is a big reason why the Heels are tough to score against inside.

Joining Johnson in the front court is James Michael McAdoo (No. 43), a highly-talented, incredibly-athletic guy who has constantly had to battle questions about his motor. After passing up on opportunities to go pro, the consensus is that the junior hurt his draft stock by sticking around too long. He has a lot to prove this season, but has done admirably so far, putting in nearly 14 points per game while grabbing 5.8 boards. With P.J. Hairston and Leslie McDonald still in NCAA eligibility limbo — something Texas fans can surely sympathize with — UNC’s success could depend upon McAdoo’s ability to step up and be another leader and playmaker.

Keys to the game

1) Control the ball – With North Carolina’s ability to force mistakes and Texas’ history of going through stretches of sloppy play, there is a high danger of quickly losing control of the game by losing control of the ball. The Longhorns gave up 21 points off of turnovers when they last traveled to Chapel Hill in 2011, and junior Jonathan Holmes (No. 10) should certainly remember how those mistakes fueled a crowd of over 21,000. Live-ball turnovers will be absolutely crippling against this team and in this environment, so the Longhorns must hang on to the rock.

2) Limit transition scoring – Simply cutting down on turnovers won’t stop the Carolina transition machine. The Heels love to look for opportunities to push the tempo off of missed shots, especially bad ones. Texas has battled some issues earlier this season with taking bad shots early in shot clocks that then led to runouts and easy points. The Longhorns don’t need to completely abandon the offensive glass, but they do need to be ready to get back at a moment’s notice and have somebody ready to stop the ball.

3) Clean up the defensive glass – Carolina doesn’t shoot the ball well from outside, and their overall shooting percentage isn’t that stellar, either. When the Heels aren’t killing teams in transition, they are killing them with second chance points, so Texas has to close out good defensive possessions with solid rebounding. The Horns are currently the 25th-best D-I team on the defensive glass, so the battle between these strengths of the two teams could be a deciding factor in the game.

While the final result of last night’s game was a disappointing one, there’s certainly a lot of encouraging things to take from it. We have so much to discuss about the Pitt game and what it means moving forward. But after two days chock full o’ basketball, we’re taking a little time off to check out the City. We’ll be back with much more hoops talk later this weekend.