UNC Basketball vs Elon: Game info, preview, prediction and more

The UNC Basketball program continues their road trip to start the 2018-19 season as they visit the Elon Phoenix on Friday, looking to move to 2-0.

The North Carolina Tar Heels resume to action on Friday after their season started off with a win against the Wofford Terriers. In what will be another road game for Carolina, they will go to a place they haven’t visited since the 1950 season.

The Elon Phoenix will not only be hosting a large crowd for their home opener and for the opponent with the Tar Heels coming to town but more importantly, it’s the debut of the new Schar Center for Elon basketball. The new area is a major upgrade from the old 1,585-seat Alumni Gym, which was its home for 69 years, and holds a capacity of 5,100 seats.

Returning basically their entire team, the Phoenix are coming off of a 14-18 season, where they ended their season losing 9 of their final 11 games of the year.

Elon started their season off with a road victory at Manhattan 62-56, but are faced with a tough task as the Tar Heels come to town.

Keys to the Game for the Tar Heels

1. Defensive Rebounding

The Tar Heels are always one of, if not the top, rebounding teams in the country but struggle to control the defensive boards, and continued that struggle in their opener against Wofford.

With the Carolina teams of recent years becoming more and more intense on the defensive end, they are forcing a lot of missed shots but can’t finish the possession with the rebound, giving the opponents an easy bucket.

Against Wofford, the Tar Heels gave up 9 offensive rebounds to a much smaller and less athletic team. For a point of reference, Carolina finished the game with 10 offensive rebounds, slightly lower than their average per game last year at 13.8.

For Elon, they had 35 rebounds, just as much as the Tar Heels did in their opener, and collected 7 of them on the offensive end. They are led in the frontcourt by their four-year starter, Tyler Seibring who stands at 6-foot-9 and weighs 225 pounds. With an average of 14.2 points and 6.7 rebounds for his career, he also as a 42.9 percent average from three over his four years.

With no real other rebounding factors, and Seibring spending a lot of his time on the perimeter, the Phoenix finished last season ranked 283rd in offensive rebounds with slightly over 9 per game, according to sports-reference.com.

2. Three-point defense

As we talked about in the Wofford preview, Fletcher Magee torched the Tar Heels last year from behind the arc, but Kenny Williams shut him down on Tuesday holding him to just 7-of-23 from the field and 3-of-16 from three.

Once again, it will be up to the Tar Heels perimeter defense.

Elon has two other players besides Seibring, who ranks second in school history for career three-point percentage, who has a career average of higher than 35 percent from three.

Dainan Swoope, a senior guard, shoots 37 percent for his career from three and 63 percent of his attempted shots throughout his career have come from the three-point line. He has averaged double-digits all but one season for the Phoenix.

Another player who has over 50 percent of their total shots attempted in their college career is another four year guard, Steve Santa Ana, who has 62 percent of his attempted shots coming from behind the arc.

The 6-foot-4 guard holds a tie for most three pointers made in a game (9) in program history.

Last meeting

This will be the first meeting since Dec. 29, 2011 in the UNC-Elon series, when the No. 5 ranked Tar Heels won 100-62 in the Dean Dome.

Carolina was led by Tyler Zeller and John Henson who both had double-doubles. Harrison Barnes also chipped in 18 points as well.

The matchup before that? You will have to go all the way back to 1950 when the Tar Heels visited Elon.

What you need to know…

What? UNC (1-0) at Elon (1-0)
When? Friday, Nov. 9
Where? Schar Center in Elon, North Carolina
TV? ESPNU.
Radio? Tar Heel Sports Network
All-Time series? UNC leads 18-4.
Prediction? UNC 83, Elon 65