Malone's First Night: Stevenson's Career-High 25 Powers UNC Past USC 88-70 in Exhibition

GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA — Michael Malone's first game as North Carolina's head coach wasn't a coronation — for a while it wasn't even comfortable. The Tar Heels trailed a shorthanded USC squad in the second half, looked disjointed for stretches, and gave the Greensboro crowd plenty to chew on. Then the defense clamped down, Jarin Stevenson went nuclear, and UNC walked out of First Horizon Coliseum with an 88-70 preseason exhibition win that said more about this team's floor than its ceiling. It doesn't count in the standings. It counted plenty for the people trying to figure out what the Malone era is going to look like.

Let's be honest about what this was: one exhibition in October, against a USC team playing without a full deck, in a building that wasn't Chapel Hill. Nobody wins a championship in a preseason scrimmage. But if you wanted a one-game snapshot of the bet Carolina made when it hired an NBA championship coach to run a college program, Friday night was a pretty good one — defense, rebounding, and the kind of second-half run that feels like coaching rather than talent.

01 The 12-0 Run That Flipped It

The turning point arrived with UNC trailing 53-49 and 13:33 left — a moment where, frankly, the arena had that nervous October energy of fans wondering if the new coach was going to lose his debut. What followed was the exact sequence Malone was hired to produce: a 12-0 run, more than six scoreless minutes for USC, and a building that got louder with every stop.

The exclamation point came from Sayon Keita, whose breakaway two-handed slam put Carolina up eight with 9:16 remaining and sent the bench into a frenzy. From there the Heels never gave it back. The final twenty minutes were a clinic in what this roster is supposed to be: UNC won the second half 51-31, led 70-61 with 3:50 to play, and closed it out 88-70. The rebounding margin ended at plus-14 for Carolina, and the Heels poured in 22 points off USC turnovers. That's not a talent story. That's an effort-and-scheme story, and in October that's the best thing you can say about a brand-new roster.

02 Stevenson's Night

Jarin Stevenson is the lone returning starter on a roster that turned over almost completely — 11 new players, three returners — and on Friday he played like a guy who understood the assignment. The Chapel Hill native went for a career-high 25 points on 8-of-14 shooting, hit four 3-pointers, sank five of six free throws, and pulled down 10 rebounds for a double-double. He was the best player on the floor by a comfortable margin, and it wasn't close.

Malone used Stevenson all over the lineup, from small forward to center, and the senior rewarded the experimentation every time. At the 4:17 mark he had already reached 21 points with Carolina up 69-58. What's encouraging isn't just the number — it's the shape of it. Stevenson averaged 8.1 points last season. If he's a legitimate 20-point threat now, this team's entire geometry changes, because it means the offense has a proven college scorer to lean on while the portal additions and freshmen figure out their roles.

03 The New Pieces Showed Something

The story of this UNC season was always going to be the newcomers, and Friday offered real evidence — mixed, but real. Neoklis Avdalas was the revelation of the night: 15 points, nine rebounds, five assists as the team's primary facilitator, and his big second half was central to the takeover. If he's that guy all year, the offense has a brain.

Isaiah Denis came off the bench for 14 points, and freshman Maximo Adams looked every bit as advertised with 11 points, six rebounds, and the kind of hustle that gets a freshman real minutes in November. Together, Denis and Adams dug Carolina out of an early 7-point hole with 15 first-half points on 5-of-6 shooting — the highest minute totals of any bench players.

The honest caveats: Utah transfer Terrence Brown, who averaged nearly 20 a game last season, managed just five quiet points (though he did throw down a breakaway dunk in the closing seconds for the exclamation point). UNC shot 25-of-30 from the line — a huge improvement over last season's charity-stripe struggles — while USC went just 14-of-21. And the frontcourt questions are real: without Cameron Fens, the Heels went 8-of-20 on layups and managed only 30 paint points, with Keita and Alexandros Samodurov combining for 11 points in 32 minutes. That's the thing to watch when the games start counting.

04 What Malone's First Night Actually Told Us

Context matters here. Carolina fired Hubert Davis after a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to VCU — a blown 19-point lead that ended the old era in the ugliest way possible — and handed the program to Malone, who won the 2023 NBA title with the Denver Nuggets and coached in the league for over a decade. At ACC Tipoff this week, Malone described the college adjustment this way: "In the NBA all you do is coach. It's all basketball. In college, the last thing you get to do is coach."

Friday was the first time he just got to coach this team against someone else, and the fingerprint was obvious: a team that defended in waves, gang-rebounded, and won the second half by 20 in an exhibition. USC is coached by Eric Musselman — another former NBA head man — so this was a fun little battle of NBA minds in October. The real tests come in November and December, when the roster's newness will get stress-tested by teams that scout and punch back. But night one gave Tar Heel Nation exactly what it needed: a win, a star turn from a returning senior, and a defense that looked like it had a plan.

For more on the roster and the program, check out the North Carolina Tar Heels team page and the rest of our sports coverage.