UNC Basketball Adds USC Exhibition, Giving Tar Heels Two High-Major Preseason Tests
· Yahoo Sports
North Carolina basketball is taking full advantage of its preseason opportunities in 2026.
The Tar Heels will face USC in an exhibition game on Friday, October 9, at First Horizon Coliseum in Greensboro, giving Michael Malone's team a second high-major opponent before the regular season even begins. The newly announced “Preseason Premiere” will tip at 7 p.m., with tickets scheduled to go on sale Friday, August 14.
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That matchup joins UNC's previously announced exhibition against Indiana on Sunday, October 18, at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
It represents a notable shift in how Carolina is utilizing the relatively new freedom to schedule multiple Division I preseason opponents.
In 2024-25, the Tar Heels traveled to face Memphis in their first major exhibition before returning home to play Division II Johnson C. Smith. Carolina beat Memphis 84-76 and Johnson C. Smith 127-63.
UNC followed essentially the same blueprint last season. The Tar Heels traveled west to face BYU at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City before hosting Division II Winston-Salem State in their second exhibition.
This time around, there will be no lower-division opponent, signaling a shift from the exhibition scheduling philosophy of Hubert Davis.
Instead, Malone and the Tar Heels will get two opportunities to test themselves against high-major competition before the games begin counting: USC in Greensboro followed nine days later by Indiana in Indianapolis.
For a team entering its first season under Malone, that should provide two valuable measuring sticks. Rather than learning about the roster against an overmatched exhibition opponent, Carolina will have two chances to see how its rotations, lineups, and schemes hold up against legitimate Division I competition.
The USC announcement also creates an interesting Greensboro subplot for the 2026-27 season.
Carolina will now make two trips to First Horizon Coliseum, first for the October 9 exhibition and again on December 15 for its unusual non-conference meeting with NC State. The Tar Heels and Wolfpack will also meet during ACC play in Chapel Hill, making the Greensboro matchup an additional installment of the rivalry outside the conference schedule.
Slowly but surely, UNC's schedule is coming completely into focus.
The Tar Heels now have both preseason exhibitions accounted for with USC and Indiana, while 13 of their 14 non-conference regular-season games are known. Among the headliners are Arkansas at home in the ACC/SEC Challenge, West Virginia in Charlotte (Dick Vitale Invitational), Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Kentucky at Madison Square Garden (CBS Sports Classic) and Illinois in Nashville. UNC's official schedule currently confirms several of those marquee games, including Indiana, Arkansas, Georgetown, Kentucky and Illinois.
Malone won't have to wait until November to find out plenty about his first Tar Heel team.
USC and Indiana should provide exactly that opportunity before he ever coaches his first official game.