CHARLOTTE, N.C. — From their seats in separate corners of a hotel ballroom, North Carolina basketball players RJ Davis and Armando Bacot kept coming back to the same word Wednesday when assessing the Tar Heels’ recent closed scrimmage against Florida Atlantic.

The word was encouraged.

“It was a good test to see where we’re at as a team,” Davis said. “I was encouraged in terms of the potential I see with this team, and where we can be. We did a lot of good things in terms of moving the ball, playing defense.”

UNC made the rounds here at ACC Tipoff, the conference’s annual event that previews the approaching basketball season, four days after winning 79-63 at Florida Atlantic in a so-called secret scrimmage. Per NCAA rules, teams are allowed one such preseason matchup, provided they keep the details mostly private. So spectators, media members and onlookers other than the teams themselves and team personnel aren’t permitted — hence the closed aspect.

The Tar Heels, who are entering coach Hubert Davis’ third season in charge, traveled to Florida Atlantic’s Boca Raton, Fla., campus for the scrimmage last weekend. FAU became an NCAA Tournament darling last season while piling up a 35-4 record and mounting a run to the first Final Four in program history. Coach Dusty May’s Owls are ranked No. 10 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, while UNC checks in at No. 19.

RJ Davis said Wednesday that he would grade UNC’s overall performance in the scrummage at FAU as “a solid B-plus.” Individually, the veteran guard Davis was on fire that day and dominated at times. Notre Dame transfer Cormac Ryan and Stanford Harrison Ingram, two of Carolina’s five portal additions, played well. The standout big man Bacot, a double-double machine, said Wednesday he didn’t put up remarkable numbers in the scrimmage. But he said that also made for perhaps one of the promising features from the Tar Heels’ perspective.

“I was highly encouraged,” Bacot said. “It was in a game where I had single-digit points and rebounds, and we still were able to go out there and perform at a high level. So I thought it was great, and RJ was amazing.

“I was really surprised at how great we were on defense. That’s what really surprised me. I thought we played great team defense, and when you play a team like FAU with four small guards and a 7-footer, those are tough games because they can all move around, they can all shoot. But the way we defended was very encouraging. And then offensively, Harrison being able to step up, Cormac, Elliott (Cadeau) pushing the ball. Jalen Washington gave us a boost. Seeing that, it was very encouraging for me.”

UNC used an experienced starting lineup of Davis, Ryan, Ingram, Bacot and Paxson Wojcik, which Bacot confirmed to us here Wednesday. Ryan is a sixth-year senior, Bacot and the Brown transfer Wojcik are fifth-year seniors, and Davis is a senior in his fourth year. The Tar Heels meet Division II St. Augustine’s in Friday night’s exhibition game at the Smith Center, before opening the new season Nov. 6 against Radford.

FAU has returned all of its starters from last season’s team, topped by dynamic guards and leading scorers Johnell Davis and Alijah Martin, and active 7-foot-1 center Vladislav Goldin. Martin, though, didn’t play in the scrimmage against the Tar Heels. He supplied 26 points and seven rebounds in the Owls’ loss to San Diego State in Final Four.

“I think the next step for us is to kind of finish out the play,” Davis said. “We played long possessions of good defense, and then one little mistake of not boxing out or grabbing the second-chance rebound. That’s going to be the next step for us in order to be good, but I’m very encouraged in terms of where we’re headed and where we’re at right now.”

Davis, Bacot, Washington and Seth Trimble are Carolina’s only remaining holdovers. The Tar Heels, who went 20-13 last season, have overhauled their roster by picking up Ryan, Ingram, Wojcik, Jae’Lyn Withers (from Louisville) and James Okonkwo (from West Virginia) on the transfer market, and adding freshman arrivals Cadeau and Zayden High.

Hubert Davis called FAU “a team that was a shot away from playing for the national championship and has all of their key players coming back this year” on Wednesday when he was asked about the closed scrimmage. He also leaned heavily on the same descriptor RJ Davis and Bacot chose.

“I was really encouraged with the entire team,” Hubert Davis said. “I told them I was really encouraged. I was encouraged by their play, but I was also encouraged by how much growth, how much better we can get. So I would say I walked away from it encouraged.”