CBS Sports Classic 2020: Teams, Schedule, Live Stream, Bracket and TV Info

The 2020 CBS Sports Classic comes with a twist unique to this season's scheduling process.

Just days before Saturday's games, the matchups were switched to pit the North Carolina Tar Heels against the Kentucky Wildcats. The Ohio State Buckeyes and UCLA Bruins will meet in the other game.

The contests will still be held at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, but the programs will play their opponents on short notice.

North Carolina and Ohio State are the two ranked sides in the four-team event. Kentucky's early-season struggles cost it a spot in the AP Top 25, while UCLA is building toward that designation.

The Tar Heels are the only one of the four programs with a winning record in the event at 4-2, but they lost their most recent showdown with Kentucky in 2018.

CBS Sports Classic Info

Games: North Carolina vs. Kentucky, UCLA vs. Ohio State

Start Times: 2 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. ET

TV: CBS

Live Stream: CBSSports.com or CBS Sports app 

Previews

North Carolina vs. Kentucky

The battle of ACC and SEC blue-blood programs is easily the more marketable of Saturday's contests.

However, the Tar Heels and Wildcats will not be the main event on the overall college basketball slate. Their matchup directly follows the No. 1-No. 3 meeting between the Gonzaga Bulldogs and Iowa Hawkeyes.

Both programs need to do plenty of work to reach the caliber of Gonzaga, Iowa and the other top-five programs this term.

One of North Carolina's two defeats occurred at the hands of Iowa in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. It also lost to the Texas Longhorns in the Maui Invitational final.

Although the Tar Heels should be much improved compared to last season, they are still in search of a marquee nonconference victory.

Forwards Garrison Brooks and Armando Bacot will be the key to North Carolina's success this season. Brooks leads the team in scoring with 11.8 points per game, and Bacot tops the chart with 8.8 rebounds per contest.

They will be in for a battle with Kentucky's Olivier Sarr, a transfer from Wake Forest. The familiarity with Sarr's game from his ACC days may give the UNC frontcourt players a bit of an advantage.

Kentucky needs its experienced players, like Sarr, to lead the team Saturday and at the start of SEC play while its latest batch of freshmen acclimates to the collegiate level.

John Calipari's teams sometimes struggle at the beginning of the season, but few of his squads performed this poorly in December. The Wildcats sit at 1-4 and enter Saturday on a four-game losing streak. The positive for Kentucky is it showed fight in the second half of its loss to the Notre Dame Fighting Irish last time out.

If the Wildcats look more like the team that rallied from a 22-point halftime deficit, they could contend with North Carolina for 40 minutes.

UCLA vs. Ohio State

Ohio State and UCLA both enter Saturday's second game in Cleveland at 5-1, but their most recent games ended in much different fashion.

The Buckeyes are coming off their first loss of the season, a road defeat to the Purdue Boilermakers to open Big Ten play.

Mick Cronin's Bruins knocked off the Marquette Golden Eagles on their home court in their previous game, which was a welcome sight after starting slow with a loss to the San Diego State Aztecs and a triple-overtime win over the Pepperdine Waves.

E.J. Liddell, Duane Washington Jr. and Justice Sueing have all led the Buckeyes in single-game scoring on two occasions. They each average more than 14 points per game.

If Chris Holtmann gets the best out of all three scorers, the Buckeyes could put an experienced Bruins team under pressure.

In Jaime Jaquez Jr., Tyger Campbell and Chris Smith, UCLA has one of the better backcourts on the west coast. Kentucky transfer Johnny Juzang is also a contributor at guard. Each of UCLA's top three scorers shoots more than 40 percent from the field. Jaquez and Campbell are both shooting more than 45 percent from three-point range.

If the Bruins backcourt causes problems for Ohio State, that could be the edge required to pick up a nonconference win and move into the Top 25.

Follow Joe on Twitter, @JTansey90. Statistics obtained from ESPN.com.