Heel Tough Blog: UNC Cracks Preseason AP Top 25

GoHeels

With ACC Tip-Off behind us, we’re getting closer and closer to the college hoops season, and another sign of that is the annual preseason poll, which was released earlier today, and to no surprise, it contained Hubert Davis and the UNC Tar Heels. After an off-season overhaul that saw Carolina bring in 11 new players, UNC will begin the 2025-26 season, #25 in the AP Poll, meaning the program will begin the season preseason ranked for all 5 of Hubert Davis’s seasons on the bench in Chapel Hill. 

One thing that is different from last year is the number of ranked games UNC will play, particularly in non-conference competition, but there are still a handful of games that feature programs in the preseason Top 25. Suppose you count the two games against Duke and the lone meeting with Louisville. In that case, UNC is scheduled to play six total games against teams in the preseason Top 25, with ranked games at Kentucky, on a neutral floor against Michigan State, and at home against Kansas in the first week of the season. 

Tomorrow, the preseason voting from ACC Tip-Off will be made public, so UNC will know where it stacks up in the conference for the upcoming season. The only last hurdle to clear before the season officially tips off is that Carolina is still awaiting the NCAA to declare international pro Luka Bogavac eligible for the 2025-26 season, a decision the UNC staff is confident will happen, although there’s no timetable for such decisions to come down from the NCAA office. 

Make sure to tune in to tonight’s live edition of The Four Corners Podcast, streaming on the Heel Tough Blog YouTube and Facebook pages, and my personal Twitter account, at @HTB_Josh. 

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