Carolina will play a familiar foe and an unfamiliar one this Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving week is always a busy time during the college basketball season, as that’s when most of the non-conference multi-team events take place. As for Thanksgiving week 2025, we know where the North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball team will be as well as who they’ll be facing off against.
UNC is set to take part in the the 2025 Fort Myers Tip-Off event, as part of the Beach Division. Their two opponents in said event will be Michigan State and Saint Bonaventure.
The Fort Myers Tip-Off is not quite a tournament like the Maui Invitational and other events of that week, in that all of the matchups are predetermined and not decided by who wins or loses. Instead, the Tar Heels are guaranteed to face the Bonnies on November 25th, and the Spartans on the 27th, Thanksgiving day. A fourth team, who UNC will not play, will be announced at some point soon.
Carolina matchups against the Spartans are pretty common. The most recent one happened just last year in the Maui Invitational, where Michigan State won in overtime. Games against St. Bonaventure are much rarer, though. There’s only been one other ever, coming in the 1968 NCAA Tournament. That day, Larry Miller and Charlie Scott scored 27 and 21 points respectively, leading the Heels to a 91-72 win over a Bonnies team that featured future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Bob Lanier. The victory got Carolina into the Elite Eight, where they beat Davidson, before eventually losing the national championship game to UCLA.
As for the games this coming year, the Michigan State one should be interesting as always. The Spartans are coming off an appearance as a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, where they advanced to the Elite Eight before falling to Auburn. The Bonnies, meanwhile, missed the tournament last year, but they’ve been a solid program of late, making trips to the Big Dance in 2018 and 2021.
All games in the Fort Myers Tip-Off will air on the various FOX networks. With a matchup of big name programs like UNC and Michigan State airing on Thanksgiving, it wouldn’t be surprising if FOX aired that game as a lead-in or immediately after FOX’s Thanksgiving football game.
The Fort Myers Tip-Off doesn’t quite have the name prestige of a Maui Invitational or a Battle 4 Atlantis, but as far as the field goes, it should be an interesting test for the Tar Heels this November.
