University of North Carolina Athletics
Tar Heels Ready For Ohio State
December 19, 2014 | Men's Basketball
CHICAGO—North Carolina (7-3) will look to win its second game in a row and its third this season over a ranked team when it plays No. 12 Ohio State (9-1) on Saturday in the CBS Sports Classic in Chicago. Tipoff is set for 1 p.m. Eastern Time, followed by Kentucky versus UCLA in the United Center, home of the NBA's Chicago Bulls.
The CBS Sports Classic will continue in future years at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Dec. 19, 2015, when Carolina will play UCLA (and Kentucky will face Ohio State). On Dec. 17, 2016, Carolina will play Kentucky in Las Vegas (where UCLA will play Ohio State).
Saturday's game will be televised nationally by CBS. Verne Lundquist (play-by-play), Greg Anthony (analyst) and Allie LaForce (reporter) will have the call. The game will be carried nationally on radio by Westwood One Sports, featuring Gary Cohen (play-by-play) and Alaa Abdelnaby (analyst).
Carolina is 2-1 this year against ranked teams, having beaten No. 22 UCLA and No. 18 Florida in the Bahamas last month and lost to No. 1 Kentucky. Saturday's game is the third in a three-game road trip this week for the Tar Heels. Carolina lost last Saturday at Kentucky, then won at UNCG on Tuesday night.
Following Saturday's game, Tar Heel players will go home for the holidays. The team will reconvene in Chapel Hill to practice on Dec. 26 prior to the Dec. 27 date with UAB. The Blazers are led by head coach Jerod Haase, a longtime former Roy Williams assistant at Kansas and UNC.
Ohio State enters Saturday's game with a record of 9-1 and has won four in a row since losing at Louisville in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge on Dec. 2. On Wednesday night, the Buckeyes defeated N.C. A&T in Columbus, Ohio, 97-55. D'Angelo Russell scored 21 points in the win and Marc Loving added 15.
A season ago, Ohio State went 25-10 and reached the NCAA Tournament second round before losing to Dayton. The Buckeyes lost its top three scorers in Aaron Craft, LaQuinton Ross and Lenzelle Smith Jr. from that team.
Senior Shannon Scott is a starting guard for the Buckeyes. He also is the son of Tar Heel great Charles Scott, the first black scholarship athlete at UNC and a two-time All-America under head coach Dean Smith from 1967-70.
Carolina leads the all-time series with Ohio State, 10-2, and has won five in a row in the series. The Tar Heels have won 10 of 11 against Ohio State since losing the first meeting between the schools in January 1929.
Carolina is 10-2 all-time against Ohio State and has won five in a row in the series.
In the current, five-game UNC winning streak over the Buckeyes, Carolina swept a home-and-home series in the 1992-93 and 1993-94 seasons as well as back-to-back ACC/Big Ten Challenge games in 2006-07 and 2007-08 (first in Chapel Hill, then in Columbus). The most recent meeting came in the semifinals of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in November 2009 (see more details below).
The last time Ohio State beat Carolina was on March 27, 1992, in the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 in Lexington, Ky. Current Tar Heel assistant coach Hubert Davis was a senior on that team and scored 21 points against the Buckeyes in his final college game. UNC radio analyst Eric Montross, a sophomore in 1992, had 21 points and 12 rebounds in the defeat.
