Welcome to College Hoops, Isiah Thomas

UPDATE: Well, this is certainly confusing. I'll leave my original post below in case something changes, but Yahoo's Marc Spears reports (via Twitter) that FIU will not play North Carolina and that they've pulled out of the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament. Spears also reports FIU will play in the tournament if they get to play Ohio State as they originally believed they would. I'm guessing this isn't the last we'll hear on the matter.


College basketball schedules continue to slowly trickle out into the world -- both through fans piecing together marquee game dates and official school announcements. One of those schools that hasn't officially announced is schedule is Florida International, which will be led by first-year coach Isiah Thomas. (He of the smile-and-point picture that keeps on giving and I absolutely refuse to stop using.)

While the Panthers' full schedule isn't out there, we now know who Thomas will face in his first regular season game on the sidelines. It's a little school you might've heard of: North Carolina. Oh, did I mention the game is in the Dean Dome. So much for easing into this whole college basketball thing.

Thomas did land himself a five-star prospect in the form of Dominique Ferguson, but unless Thomas wants to petition the NCAA to get him there a year early (Ferguson is class of 2010) then, well, he's kind of screwed in this one.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.