UAB Blazers To Host North Carolina with All Eyes in Birmingham Watching

North Carolina is certainly not the best team ever visit Bartow Arena, but you can rest assured that the Tar Heels are the most recognizable.

The NIT match up between the Heels and Blazers will not be as entertaining as UTEP and UAB in two overtimes earlier this season. And certainly not when number ones Louisville and Memphis came to town in 2003 and 2008 respectively.

But the North Carolina Tar Heels will be the only team with a name big enough to sale out a basketball game in more than 24 hours before the contest in this football crazed state.

North Carolina is the defending national champion. North Carolina is where Dean Smith coached and Michael Jordan played.

UAB? Not so much.

But the tradition on the Southside is not absolutely non-existent.

The Blazers are a good basketball team and they have been to the show. They've been to the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament. They've beaten top 25 teams. They've given the people of Alabama a decent basketball option.

But North Carolina has their own shade of blue!

North Carolina, despite having to come to Bartow Arena, is Goliath in this game.

North Carolina is the third team from the Carolinas to visit UAB in the NIT, Coastal Carolina and North Carolina State have been victims of the Blazers and it wasn't even close.

But the Tar Heels and Roy Williams will certainly have something the other two schools didn't have.

A raucous, sold-out crowd in their ears rooting for the hometown team.

And I will be there rooting, too.

Go Blazers!