I am here flying solo tonight. No snow in Winston as of now but it was snowing pretty hard in the Greensboro area.

Time is running out for UNC and with two games coming up against Pittsburgh and one against Duke and Clemson within about a 10 day span the Heels need desperately to find a way to win tonight. Sallis for the demon Deacons has serious game so Trimble may have to play serious minutes to slow down that sharp shooter. Cold and snowy outside now but hopefully Carolina will not play that way on the road in Winston Salem…

The Tar Heel coaching staff has started recruiting class of 2026 prospects and we believe will hit start hitting them hard this summer and fall, so we are launching the 2026 thread. We will post all content and related notes to the class in this thread.

We start the thread with in-state star Kendre Harrison from Reidsville (NC) HS.

Carolina faces another big team and they are averaging as a team about 85 points a game. The Mustangs do not shoot a ton of threes because they rebound so well but in their last game out they got demolished at home vs Duke.

For Carolina to win it must be a full team effort to block out and rebound and to run as much as possible. It will be nice to have Trimble back because of his on the ball defense and his 15 points per game he has been averaging.

The bigs are the key to this contest so Washington, Brown and must Lubin must up their game both offensively and defensively…

...and I had to take a breath before I wrote this one, because there's just no mitigating how bad this sucked.

Gonna start at the end (and please know I would've written this exact same thing if they had missed the last shot):

- Sure there are different philosphies of how to play these last-second situations, but IMO you just CANNOT afford to let a guy take the rock that close to the hoop unmolested. We have seen what happens over and over in history --- Danny Ainge and Ty Edney in the NCAAT, for example --- when you let a guy take the ball coast-to-coast. We were fortunate we got the stop at ND, and this time it bit us. With 7+ seconds a slight redirect ain't enough --- even on an early hand-off, you HAVE to anticipate and make him pick up his dribble with a shadow double and/or force him to the sideline.

OK... other stuff from my notes. Hubert was right at least that it wasn't just one thing thet went wrong today --- it was a bunch:

- This Stanford team is clunky at the handle, resorting to myriad push-offs, illegal screens and "happy feet" when forced to pick up dribbles (lordy at the travels), and wants to play slow. Point is, they were made to scramble against but the only wrinkle we threw in (other than one series of 44) was occasional pre-emptive doubles on their Big. By allowing them to play at their pace, they were able to work enough looks to make enough to keep us from getting out in transition.

- Speaking of transition, the only resistance they could offer was fouling (at least the ones that got called). We actually had 16 Fast Break points (home stat guy strikes again) but that needed to be more today. I did not like slowing to their tempo down the stretch.

- we know Raynaud is a skilled player, but good grief, we did some stupid sh*** to help him, like Wash leaving his feet or getting too close when he was 25 ft from the basket, and geez Lubin --- how the hell are you stuck in the paint when your man is alone at the arc and you know he can shoot?

- And just when this team seemed to be gelling defensively, just yikes at the breakdowns. How many times are ya gonna get punked on simple OB plays? Jackson in particular looked like a Freshman trailing behind #4 on simple actions several times, and even Seth got caught on his heels a time or two. In a lot of ways, those gaffes were self-inflicted difference-makers.

- RJ made a few shots today, and they were needed, but he is still far from back to assassin-mode. And as potent has Ian has been lately, hoo boy... yikes, not today.

- head-scrathing moments (again). Stanford's in Zone and we reverse to an advantage with ball going to Drake on the backside wing. Defense reacts leaving Tyson ALL ALONE in the corner next to him, but Drake ignores him while instead taking a dribble to force a shot. Later RJ ignores Tyson open in the other corner, again just an easy pass away, and turns and passes out. What the actual f***?

- any time Eliot was out any semblance of a half-court offense went away. TBH, he shouldn't have left the damn floor in the second half. That 12, 6 (not 5) and 6 line was much needed, but 25 minutes ain't enough.

- I did like the last play call to Seth, but not so fond of a few leading up to that one

Anyway, damn it! Every time we looked to pull away, one of the aforementioned f***-ups would reel us back in or let back them in. Just can't afford to play with fire. This one hurts and there's no way around it....

The portal will be open in a month and some news is coming out. So we will post stuff in this thread.

Running list of portal commitments and losses. I will edit this post with new commitments and losses so you don't have to scroll through 100 messages to find the info.

You can click on their name for Rivals profile it UNC bio for the UNC players in the portal.

Hopefully I have them all If I missed anything or spelled something wrong, please let me know.

I will leave it open for comments for now, but I don't want to use this thread for a bunch of comments...just a quick list of names. Still use the portal thread for discussion. Thanks

Portal Commits (19)

DL - 3; LB - 1; DB - 4; QB - 1; WR - 2; TE - 1; OL - 5; K - 2

Khmori House - LB, Washington
Aziah Johnson - WR, Michigan State
Chad Lindberg - T, Rice
Ryan Browne - QB, Purdue
Miles McVay - T, Alabama
CJ Mims - DL, ECU
Adam Samaha - K, Michigan
Connor Cox - TE, South Carolina
Melkart Abou-Jaoude - Edge, Delaware
Christo Kelly - OL, Holy Cross
William Boone - OT, Prairie View
Gavin Gibson - DB, ECU
Pryce Yates - EDGE, UConn
Coleman Bryson - DB, Minnesota
Jason Robinson Jr - WR, Washington
Peyton Waters - S, Washington
Jaffer Murphy - K, Lake Eerie
Daniel King - OL, Troy
Thaddeus Dixon - CB , Washington

Portal Losses (15)

Andrew Rosinski - T, Georgia Tech
Howard Sampson - T, Texas Tech
Jackiah Leftwich - UCF
Noah Burnette - K, Notre Dame
Travis Shaw - DT, Texas
Conner Harrell - QB, Charlotte
Jordan Louie - RB, In Portal
Zach Greenberg - OL, James Madison
Eli Sutton - OL, Austin Peay
Tyrane Stewart - DB, In Portal
Michael Merdinger - QB, In Portal
Ashton Woods - LB, In Portal
Caleb Lavalee - LB, Florida State
DeAndre Boykins - CB, In Portal (Graduate)
Jacolby Criswell - QB, ETSU (Graduate)

#6 is pretty fair I think. If the pitching can stay healthy, this team should be in Omaha again. The talent is there.

Seems Campbell is leaving

I often find things to post related to college basketball in general, but don't want to start a new thread for something short lived or takeover an existing thread. As such, feel free to use this thread to discuss anything college basketball related that isn't necessarily UNC related. I'll start with this stat. I feel like it gets posted somewhere here every year. Unfortunately (but not surprisingly), the good guys aren't included in the list.

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Down to UNC, UK and Ohio State. Didn't know Ohio State was in the mix.

is there a coach in America that gets less out of what he has than Hubert Davis? Bubba please fire this nice man at the end of this cluster of a season.

We will add all UNC Football offers on this thread instead of posting each individual offer. We expect several offers to be going out from the staff.

We will post any news, tidbits, etc for the class of 2025 prospects that the Tar Heels will be recruiting here.

Here are some players that the Tar Heels have offered:

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https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/44/american-university-eagles

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North Carolina Tar Heels​

12-7, 5-2 Conference
ESPN
1/21
9:00 PM

Wake Forest Demon Deacons​

14-4, 6-1 Conference


NCAA College Basketball Odds, Betting Lines & Point Spreads



Contest Rules:

Contest #1: Total points for entire season
Contest #2: Reset: Total points after game #15
Contest #3: Final Four Pool Bracket (Top 64 players)
Contest #4 Grand Prize: Total points ACC and NCAA tournaments games through title game (contest continues even if UNC eliminated)
Contest #5 Early Season Non-Conference Contest


Bullet Points!
For the first 20 games, three (3) Bullet points will automatically be added for any player that forgets to post a prediction for a game. Thus, as long as a player posts a prediction for at least one game, he will receive 3 points for all games that he fails to make a prediction. This is applicable even if he does not make his first prediction until the 20th game of the season. In this case, he will still get 60 points for the first 20 games that he failed to make a prediction for. Bullet Points will be automatically added. You do not have to request them.


Points Awarded Per Game
36 pts--Max points, Quadruple points game
27 pts--Max points, Triple points game
18 pts--Double points game
12 pts--Partial points, Quadruple points game
9 pts--Partial points, Triple points game
6 pts--Partial points, Double points game
3 pts--automatic points for any game missed (you failed to make a prediction) in first 20 games


Contest #1 Prizes
1st Place - 1-Year Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
2nd Place - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
3rd Place - 3-Month Subscription to Premium
4th Place-- 3-Month Subscription to Premium

Contest #2 Prizes
1st Place - 1-Year Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
2nd Place - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
3rd Place - 3-Month Subscription to Premium
4th Place-- 3- month Subscription to Premium

Contest #3 Prize - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize

Grand Prize (Contest #4)
Post Season Contest
Top 15 players in Contest #1 and # 2
ACC and NCAA Tournaments games through title game (contest continues even if UNC eliminated)
Prizes: Large Flat Screen TV, Laptop or Tablet (winner option)

Contest #5 Early Season Non-Conference Contest

Let's post NET weekly (and eventually daily) rankings here in this thread.

The latest:

Detroit Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, 38, has agreed to a deal to become the Chicago Bears' next head coach. Johnson, who has been the Lions' offensive coordinator for the past three seasons, will fill the job vacated by Matt Eberflus when he was fired on November 29. Johnson will be the 19th head coach in the franchise's 105-year existence. (ESPN.com)