North Carolina will debut a brand new look under head coach Michael Malone in Monday’s season opener against visiting Western Carolina, a group also managing a roster transition.
The Tar Heels enter the 2026-27 campaign with relatively low expectations for a program with six national title banners and 21 Final Four appearances.
Malone arrives in Chapel Hill after a decade in charge of the NBA’s Denver Nuggets. His group begins the year just outside the AP Top 25 — in the others receiving votes category — after an offseason that included the arrival of 11 new players.
The Heels finished their preseason 2-1 with a home win over Southern California and UNC Charlotte (in overtime), sandwiched by a hefty 76-58 defeat at Indiana, another traditional power that begins the season unranked.
Returning senior Jarin Stevenson scored 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in the win over USC on Oct. 9, and Terrence Brown, a senior transfer from Utah, scored 27 points against Charlotte last Tuesday night.
“I think we all know collectively that we can and we have to play a lot better,” Malone said after the Charlotte win. “You know, the season is upon us. There’s no more exhibition games. We’re done… So we have to clean things up in a hurry. We have to take ownership of that.”
Western Carolina managed a similar level of personnel change, welcoming 11 newcomers ahead of its third season under head coach Tim Craft, following a fifth-place finish in the Southern Conference.
The Catamounts swept their two preseason encounters, earning an 83-76 win at Appalachian State on Oct. 20 and a 95-65 home victory over USC Upstate last Monday.
Official statistics weren’t made available by either school, but on the “Tracking the Cats” podcast, Craft said sophomore transfer Jaeden Roberts scored 16 points against App State while senior transfer Isaiah Manning and freshman Antonio McKoy added 15 each.
“Our team did a great job taking care of the ball,” Craft said on the podcast. “We only turned the ball over four times the whole game, which was a big emphasis for us. That’s something we haven’t been great at, just in practice. So I was really pleased with that part of it.”
