The Tar Heels have had a shaky start to the 2026 calendar year, with a blowout loss to SMU, and then bounced back a full week later by beating Wake Forrest in a narrow win. Then last night, the Tar Heels had a narrow defeat against the Stanford Cardinal on the road. We will take a deep dive into both of the losses in this post.
The Heels were coming off a big opening ACC win against FSU. The win was a major win and something that I personally thought would help look forward to the rest of ACC play. I expected us to cruise against non-ranked teams, but that has proven to be anything but true.
The Tar Heels had their second true road game of the season with a trip to Texas to play against SMU. In this game, Boopie Miller had a career day, a double-double with 27 points and 12 assists. As a team, SMU shot 60% from the floor and 52% from 3. The Tar Heel defense was nonexistent, as the Miller-led SMU squad won 97-83. SMU was able to eliminate Henri Veesaar and Caleb Wilson from scoring, holding them to under 30 points combined.
The Heels bounced back against Wake Forest before taking the trip to California to play Stanford and Cal. Stanford would upset the Heels 95-90 on a career night from a top 3 player in the country Ebuka Okorie. Okorie went off in this game, scoring 36 points; the Heels had no answer for him. Despite Veesaar and Wilson combining for 50 points, Stanford was able to pull off the upset.
The Tar Heel head coach, Hubert Davis, said before the game that Stanford was a very talented team and that stopping 1 guy wasn’t going to be enough. Stanford was mostly one guy, but lots of guys contributed to the win, as Stanford shot 57.1% from 3. A team win for the Cardinal brings the Heels back to the drawing board before finishing the California road trip by facing off against Cal.
