The UNC men’s basketball game at Stanford Wednesday night will set a record for the longest distance traveled by the Tar Heels to play an Atlantic Coast Conference contest. From the Dean Smith Center to the Cardinal’s Maples Pavilion, the team’s journey will take it 2,788 miles from sea to shining sea.
That seemingly unbreakable record will stand for all of three days until UNC takes the court in Berkeley to face Cal Saturday afternoon. The Bears’ Haas Pavilion is 2,805 miles from the Smith Center.
Carolina’s west coast swing is a feature, not a bug, of the new ACC. And since the Cardinal and Bears joined the league a season ago, this Golden State doubleheader has proven difficult to navigate for other teams. Of the 11 ACC sides which have so far made the trip out west for two games, only Wake Forest last season won both. Five of the 11 lost both games. UNC and Duke are both traveling to California this week hoping to snap that run of futility.
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For his part, Tar Heels head coach Hubert Davis downplayed the effects the long flight and the three-hour time difference will have on his team.
“We fly privately, we stay in nice hotels and we’re playing basketball,” Davis said on his weekly radio show Monday. “These guys have grown up flying all over the country and playing. So we’re accustomed to that.”
Notably, UNC lucked out in its tip-off times for the two games. Wednesday’s contest at Stanford tips off at 6 p.m. Pacific time, or 9 p.m. Eastern time. When including their exhibition game against BYU in Salt Lake City in October, the Tar Heels have played three games this season which have tipped off at 9 p.m. Eastern or later — including a 9:30 p.m. tip-off at Kentucky. Saturday’s game at Cal tips off at 1 p.m. Pacific, or 4 p.m. Eastern. Compare this with the Blue Devils, who will tip off at 8 p.m. Pacific Wednesday at Cal, or 11 p.m. for Duke fans back home in Durham.
Another quirk of the road trip will be UNC’s extended stay. The Tar Heels, who flew westward Monday night, will remain in California for almost the entire week instead of jetting back and forth from North Carolina. On the “Carolina Insider” podcast Monday, Tar Heel Sports Network analyst and former UNC All-American Tyler Zeller cautioned against the team remaining cooped up in its hotel for all non-basketball activities.
“Get out and walk,” said Zeller, who played for seven different NBA teams across an eight-year professional career. “You’re in the hotel for five or six days. It’s easy to be like, ‘Alright, I went to practice, now I’m done.’ Get out, move around a little bit. Don’t sit around for the other eight, ten hours of the day. If you can just get out and do something, it changes the energy. You don’t feel so sluggish going into the games.”
Overall, UNC is 16-9 in 25 all-time games played in the state of California, including a 3-0 record at Stanford and a 1-0 record at Cal. The Tar Heels last visited Maples Pavilion early in the 2017-18 season, beating the Cardinal 96-72 thanks to 29 points from Joel Berry and six first-half three-pointers from Kenny Williams. Carolina’s last trip to the Golden State wasn’t a happy one, though, as the Tar Heels lost 89-87 to Alabama in the 2024 NCAA Sweet 16 in Los Angeles.
The ever-positive Davis chose not to linger on that bad memory, which is also the only game UNC has played in California under his leadership. If anything, Davis could perhaps take inspiration from Stanford’s trip to Chapel Hill last season, when the Cardinal used a game-winning shot in the final seconds to beat the Tar Heels for the first time in program history.
Davis’ ultimate message to his team? Keep it simple.
“People talk about this trip very similar to when you’re playing and shooting in domes,” the head coach said on his radio show. “Is it different? No, the basket’s still the same height. It’s the same ball. Whether we’re here in Chapel Hill or in California, we’re gonna have to play well.”
Featured image via Associated Press/Chris Seward
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