A look at UConn men’s basketball history vs. North Carolina

The UConn men’s basketball team will face North Carolina for the seventh time in history and the first time since 2005 when the two storied programs take the floor at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.

The Huskies are 1-5 all-time against the Tar Heels, but they’ve had some memorable meetings over the years, many of which seemed to serve as motivation for national championship runs. It would have been natural for UConn to look up to North Carolina as a program in the earlier days, and competing with them would have given the Huskies confidence, as it seemed to after the ’98 matchup. But that also worked the other way too, as UNC proved in 2004.

Here’s a look back at the history between the Huskies and ‘Heels:

Dec. 6, 1990

No. 10 North Carolina 79, No. 14 UConn 64

There was barely any time for a greeting in the first-ever meeting between these two, as UConn raced out to a 12-1 lead thanks to a press that had North Carolina flummoxed.

“We would have never beaten Connecticut except here at home, the way we played,” Smith said after the game, according to a New York Times report. “I never thought in my wildest dreams that their press would bother us as much as it seemed to at the beginning of the game.”

UNC rebounded– literally, thanks to future NBA stalwarts Rick Fox, who led the way with 18 points and 10 boards, and George Lynch, who posted 12 points and 14 boards. Carolina outrebounded the Huskies 59-32 in the game.

Chris Smith, who would become UConn’s all-time leading scorer, led the Huskies with 21 points.

North Carolina would go on to lose to Kansas in the Final Four that season, while UConn lost a memorable game to Christian Laettner and Duke in the Sweet 16.

March 21, 1998

(1) North Carolina 75, (2) UConn 64

The second-ever meeting between these two programs came in the 1998 Elite Eight, which was played in a heavily pro-UNC environment in Greensboro, N.C. A loaded Tar Heels squad featuring Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Ed Cota and Shammond Williams just had enough to push past the Huskies, who had beaten Indiana and Washington en route to the regional final, edging the other Huskies on a memorable buzzer-beater by Rip Hamilton. (Hamilton, no… another tip, no… Hamilton at the buzzer, yes!)

UConn trailed by 11 in the second half but rallied to bring it to within one on a three-point play by a freshman Khalid El-Amin with 5:37 left in the game. “We knew that we could have beaten them,” then-junior guard…