Tar Heels Set For Visit To No. 2 Gonzaga Wednesday Night

GAME 11 NOTEBOOK
• North Carolina will visit No. 2 Gonzaga on Wednesday night at 9 p.m. Eastern in Spokane, Wash. ESPN will televise the game.
• Carolina is 6-4 overall, 1-1 in the ACC. The Tar Heels have lost three consecutive games; to Ohio State in the Smith Center, at Virginia and to Wofford in Carmichael Arena.
• UNC hasn't lost four straight games since the 2009-10 season (to Virginia, Virginia Tech, Maryland and Duke).
• Carolina's leading scorer, freshman point guard Cole Anthony, is expected to miss four to six weeks after undergoing an arthroscopic procedure to treat a partially torn meniscus in his right knee on Dec. 16. He did not play against Wofford on Dec. 15. He is averaging 19.1 points per game, second among all freshmen in the nation.
• Sophomore Leaky Black did make the trip and is questionable for the game vs. Gonzaga. He sprained his right foot against Michigan on Nov. 28 and did not play against Wofford.
• Carolina has lost consecutive games despite holding the opposition to under 40 percent shooting from the floor. Those were just the 19th and 20th time UNC has lost in 243 games in the Roy Williams Era when the opposition failed to shoot 40 percent from the floor.
• The Tar Heels are 1-3 in Washington. All four previous games were in the NCAA Tournament.
• Carolina split a pair of games in the Kingdome in Seattle in the 1988 NCAA West Regional (beat Michigan, lost to Arizona), lost to UCLA in a national semifinal in the Kingdome in 1995 and lost to Weber State in Key Arena in Seattle in the first round of the 1999 NCAA Tournament.
• Carolina is unranked this week. That snaps a 106-week stretch in which the Tar Heels were ranked in the AP poll. The last time UNC was unranked was week 16 in 2013-14.
• Gonzaga is UNC's third top-10 opponent in the last four games (No. 6 Ohio State, No. 5 Virginia and No. 2 Gonzaga). It's the first time UNC will play three top-10 teams in December since 2009-10, when UNC beat No. 9 Michigan State, lost at No. 5 Kentucky and lost to No. 2 Texas in Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington.
• No. 2 Gonzaga is Carolina's highest-ranked (AP) non-conference opponent since the Tar Heels defeated No. 2 Gonzaga in the 2017 NCAA championship game in Phoenix on April 3, 2017.

UNC-GONZAGA SERIES
• Carolina is 3-1 against the Zags. This is UNC's first game in Spokane.
• Gonzaga beat UNC, 82-74, in the 2006 Preseason NIT at Madison Square Garden. Freshman forward Brandan Wright led the Tar Heels with 21 points and 13 rebounds.
• Carolina advanced to the 2009 NCAA South Regional final by beating Gonzaga, 98-77, in Memphis in a Sweet 16 encounter. Tyler Hansbrough had 24 points and 10 rebounds, Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson (nine assists) both scored 19 and Danny Green had seven assists, four steals and two blocks.
• the Tar Heels beat the Bulldogs, 71-65, on April 3, 2017, in Glendale, Ariz., in the national championship game. Final Four MVP Joel Berry II scored a game-high 22 points and had six assists, Justin Jackson had 16 points, three assists and two blocks, Kennedy Meeks had 10 rebounds and had a block and a steal in the final 16 seconds and Isaiah Hicks had 13 points and a season-high nine rebounds.
• Roy Williams is 4-1 against Gonzaga, including a win while the head coach at Kansas. That game was played in Lawrence, the first game of the 1998-99 season for the Jayhawks.

LAST TIME THEY MET
UNC 103, GONZAGA 90 (12/15/2018)
• The 103 points were UNC's second-most ever against an AP top-five team.
• UNC out-scored Gonzaga, 27-0, in second-chance points.
• Carolina made 13 three-pointers.
• UNC committed a season-high 23 turnovers that led to 29 Gonzaga points.
• Cameron Johnson led all scorers with 25 points and tied his career high with six three-pointers (fifth time in his career...twice at Pitt, three times as a Tar Heel).
• Luke Maye had 20 points and 16 rebounds.
• Seventh Woods made two threes and scored a career-high 14 points.
• Garrison Brooks set a then-career-high with nine rebounds, including five offensive.

STAT TRENDS
• The Tar Heels lead the nation in rebounding (46.3), are second in offensive rebounds (15.2) and fifth in rebound margin (+11.3).
• Carolina has scored 49, 47 and 64 points in the last three games. That's the first time UNC has scored under 70 in three straight games since scoring 67 at Wake Forest, 57 vs. Miami and 45 at Syracuse in 2013-14. The last time UNC scored less than 70 points in four straight games was in 2002-03.
• UNC has scored less than 80 points in each of the first 10 games for the first time since 1949-50 (UNC scored less than 80 in all 29 of their games that season).
• Carolina has shot under 50 percent from the floor in the first 10 games. That's the longest stretch to open a season since the 1959-60 team shot 53.6 percent against Duke in the 16th game of the season.
• Carolina's field goal percentage (.398) is its lowest since the 1957-58 season and its three-point percentage (.287) is its lowest ever.
• Carolina is 11th in the ACC in scoring at 68.2 points per game. Carolina has finished first, first, second and first in the ACC in scoring in the last four seasons.
• In Roy Williams' previous 16 seasons, Carolina has led the ACC in scoring eight times, finished second five times and third three times.
• No Roy Williams-coached team in 16 previous seasons at UNC has averaged less than 74.5 points per game (in 2009-10). The lowest scoring average in 15 seasons at Kansas (1988-2003) was 72.1 in 1998-99. Williams' teams have averaged 80 or more points in 23 of his previous 31 seasons as a head coach.

WILLIAMS NO. 5 IN ALL-TIME WINS
• The win over Oregon was Carolina head coach Roy Williams' 877th, moving him ahead of Kentucky's Adolph Rupp for fifth place in wins by a Division I head coach. Fellow Naismith Hall of Famer Dean Smith, under whom Williams spent 10 years as an assistant coach, is fourth with 879.
• Roy Williams has won 459 games as UNC's head coach, fourth most at an ACC school. He is three wins from passing Gary Williams, who won 461 games at Maryland.

Most Wins by a Division I Head Coach
1140 Mike Krzyzewski
951 Jim Boeheim
902 Bob Knight
879 Dean Smith
877 Roy Williams
876 Adolph Rupp

Most Wins as an ACC Head Coach, All Games
1068 Mike Krzyzewski Duke
879 Dean Smith North Carolina
461 Gary Williams Maryland
459 Roy Williams North Carolina
354 Bobby Cremins Georgia Tech

KENPOM NOTABLES
• This season Ken Pomeroy began tracking 'minutes continuity,' which determines what percentage of a team's minutes are played by the same player from last season to this season. The national average is approximately 50 percent.
• Carolina is 325th in minutes continuity at 24.6 percent.
• Carolina has played the 26th most difficult schedule in the country. UNC has already played against No. 3 Ohio State, No. 10 Oregon, No. 11 Virginia and No. 14 Michigan and play No. 2 Gonzaga in the next game. Fourth-ranked Louisville and No. 5 Duke are among UNC's conference foes.
• Carolina is 308th in effective field goal percentage at .441. That is UNC's lowest since KenPom began tracking stats in 2001-02. The previous low was .480 in 2009-10. UNC has been above 50 percent in each of the last five seasons.
• Carolina is 298th in two-point percentage (.446), 304th in 3FG percentage (.287) and 318th in free throw percentage (.632).
• Carolina is No. 9 nationally in offensive rebound percentage. The Tar Heels grab 37.5 percent of their own misses.

POLLING
• Coming off three straight losses Carolina fell out of the top 25 in this week's Associated Press poll. UNC had been ranked in the top 10 in each of the first five weeks of the 2019-20 AP poll.
• This is the first time in 107 polls that the Tar Heels are not ranked in the AP poll.
• The last time UNC was not in the AP top 25 was the 16th week in the 2013-14 season.
• UNC has finished the season in the top 10 in each of the last four seasons (3 in 2015-16, 5 in 2016-17, 10 in 2017-18 and 3 in 2018-19).
• Carolina has been ranked in 922 AP polls, the most rankings of any school in the country.
• Carolina has finished in the Top 10 of the AP poll 38 times, including 27 of the previous 39 years.

2019 SIGNEES
• R.J. Davis, a 5-11 guard from White Plains, N.Y.
• Donovan "Puff" Johnson, a 6-7 forward from Moon Township, Pa.
• Walker Kessler, a 7-0 forward from Newnan, Ga.
• Caleb Love, a 6-3 guard from St. Louis, Mo.
• Day'Ron Sharpe, a 6-10 forward from Greenville, N.C.

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Leaky Black

Garrison Brooks

Cameron Johnson

Luke Maye

Seventh Woods