By R.L. Bynum
Reclassifying to play an entire freshman season before turning 18 is far from a conventional route for women’s basketball players.
But 5–10 five-star point guard phenom Lanie Grant, the 2024 Gatorade Virginia Player of the Year, has defied convention since getting her first scholarship offer three months after turning 13. She committed to North Carolina on Thanksgiving Day 2021, at age 14, before playing her first high school game.
Being the youngest player in an ACC program with high aspirations might feel uncomfortable.
Perfect!
“Forcing myself to put myself in uncomfortable positions — that’s always helped me,” said Grant, who boasts superior ballhandling skills, prolific perimeter shooting and tenacity on defense.
The pressure of all that attention might overwhelm many teenagers, and Grant — who turned 17 on Tuesday — admits that she wasn’t always the most confident kid in the gym.
“[The confidence] came with knowing that I put in so much work and knowing that I had outworked a lot of the girls that I was playing,” said Grant, who won a gold medal playing for the United States last summer at the FIBA Americas U16 Championship. “And that’s where I kind of pulled my confidence from.”
During her freshman season at James River High School in Midlothian, Va., she began to realize her potential.
“I was pretty confident coming in, but that skyrocketed because I realized that I could truly score whenever and wherever I wanted,” said Grant, who MaxPreps named last week second-team All-American for her class. “And it got better every single year.”
It doesn’t take long to realize that her confidence level is high, even as she is realistic about the adjustments she will need to make at the college level.
“I can shoot the ball really, really well,” said Grant, who shot 59% from the floor and 52% from 3-point range in six playoff games while leading James River to a 25–4 record and the Class 5 Virginia state championship game. “It’s something I pride myself on — I can shoot from anywhere on the court. I’m a glue player. I bring people together. I can pass the ball well. I have a high IQ. I catch on to things really quickly, which is good.”
Grant, a two-time Class 5 First Team All-State selection, averaged 28.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.7 steals last season while adeptly guarding one through five on defense.
“She will bring so much to us, as she is both fiercely competitive and incredibly driven,” UNC coach Courtney Banghart said. “She is a two-way player ready to help as a ballhandling guard with a scorer’s mentality as well as a tenacity on defense.”
Grant’s talents go well beyond the court, including a 4.47 GPA, time spent helping with Special Olympics, and mentoring young girls at regular “Learning with Lanie” basketball clinics.
“I like to be a role model and teach them the game because I know that, when I was younger, I had role models that I looked up to,” Grant said, mentioning former UConn and WNBA player Meghan Walker and former Virginia Tech player Taja Cole.
“All these players who I looked up to were a big part of the reason why I’m where I’m at now,” said Grant, who is interested in coaching after her playing career. “Just giving them a role model and pouring my passion for the game into them and their love for that. I love it. I love teaching kids.”
Doubting Grant on the court is as foolhardy as expecting that you can guard her when she shows off her quickness driving to the hoop or her impressive shooting range.
“I’ve always played best when I have something to prove,” Grant said. “When I’m younger, and I’m going up against girls a couple of years older than me — or when I’m playing boys — everything has to be sharper, everything has to be quicker. There’s no room to be lazy.”
Grant said that she doesn’t pattern her game after any one player. She loves the way that Caitlin Clark, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant approach the game and their mindset. Grant says that she takes elements from the games of several players — the way that Clark shoots, the way that New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu works off ball screens or the mid-range pull-up game of UConn guard Azzi Fudd.
“I like to pull different things from different people,” Grant said.
She’s not shy about firing shots from all over the court or talking about her range.
“It’s a bold statement to make, but I know I can shoot it from really, really far out, I can tell you that,” Grant said. “The way that Caitlin and Steph [Curry] shoot off the move from damn-near half-court is insane. And I know that I have the potential to do that. And I can do that. But I’m excited to see how that translates over to college.”
Her ascension continued last season as a junior despite being double-teamed and face-guarded every game and many times sitting out fourth quarters because James River was winning by such a wide margin.
“Had to work hard and smart for the numbers,” said Grant, who didn’t play in five games against particularly overmatched opponents. “Learned how to score in creative ways and take/make tough contested shots.”
Her scoring average was the second-highest in the country among juniors, behind only Aaliya Chavez, the No. 1 ranked player in the Class of 2025. Grant shot 51% from the floor and 89% from the free-throw line.
(Photo courtesy of Lanie Grant)
Grant averaged 33 points while playing every minute of James Rivers’ six playoff games.
On Dec. 30, she had 30 points, 10 rebounds, and four assists against nationally ranked Purcell Marian of Cincinnati, the Ohio state champions, at a tournament in Miami. James River played a close game and nearly pulled the upset against a team that finished 28–1 before the Ohio team pulled away to win 76–66.
She scored a career-high 45 points in the quarterfinals of the state playoffs and 40 points in an 80–70 loss to Princess Anne in the championship game.
“We didn’t end up pulling that one out, so it was a little bittersweet,” said Grant, who was heartened to talk after the game with Banghart, who was also courtside for some of her FIBA games in Mexico last summer.
Banghart, who chatted with Grant after the game, first suggested she consider reclassifying during a phone conversation days after what turned out to be her final high school game.
“It’s a really big decision, so I had to look at it from all angles,” Grant said. “From the jump, I was really into it. Immediately when it got put out into the airspace, I latched onto that idea and I was really excited. It took a minute because I wanted to get every angle and make sure that it was really something that I wanted to do because it is a really big decision.”
Many high school students wouldn’t have the option. However, Grant isn’t like most teenagers and says she “unknowingly” stacked her credits during the first three years of high school. By the end of the school year, she’ll have enough credits, but she’ll need to take two required classes in summer school — a government class and English 12 — to graduate.
“I was really fortunate that I decided to take harder schedules earlier in high school because that’s what I was just interested in — the classes that I took. And it all worked out, which is great,” Grant said.
Given that she had committed to UNC about 2½ years earlier, Banghart traveling to Mexico to see her play for the United States impressed her.
“It means everything. That’s going to be my college coach,” said Grant, who averaged 11.2 points, 2.2 rebounds and 3.2 assists, leading the team in 3-pointers (10) and 3-point shooting percentage (42%) as the American team went 6–0. “You think that maybe once she got me to commit, maybe it would be a little bit less? No, she truly cares about me. She cares about all of her recruits. It was really, really cool to know that I’m sitting there in Mexico, and I look up, and I see my future college coach in the stands.”
Although she expects to be around the team various times this summer, she may not be in Chapel Hill fully until August.
Grant won’t be able to participate in high school graduation ceremonies this spring but hopes to do that in 2025. Saturday night was prom night, and she considered it her senior prom.
Richmond made that first scholarship offer when she was 13. She also visited Virginia, Virginia Tech, Michigan, and Maryland and received around 25 other offers before she committed to UNC.
(Photo courtesy of Lanie Grant)
Carolina was always her dream school, though. She grew up with a grandfather (Charles Grant, who was raised in Greensboro) and father (Jeff Grant, who was born in High Point and moved to Richmond when he was young) who are huge Carolina fans. Her 14-year-old brother Sam, who plays lacrosse and basketball, has a room covered with UNC posters.
“Obviously, I chose UNC,” said Grant, whose older brother George, 19, played football in high school. “They were the ones I chose to rock with, and the energy, what Coach B is building, her philosophies — I just think that it’s a perfect fit for me, and it’s a perfect fit for what I want to try to do in college.”
Grant, who signed with UNC officially on April 17 after announcing on March 31 that she would reclassify, will be the youngest of a talented group of lead guards, including fellow freshman Jordan Zubich (a 5–11, 4-star recruit), sophomores Reniya Kelly and Sydney Barker, and redshirt junior Kayla McPherson. The oldest will be fellow James River alum Grace Townsend, a 5–5 graduate transfer from Richmond.
“My mindset stepping onto Chapel Hill,” Grant said, “is what can I do to help this team win and to help us get as far as we can possibly get with a group that we have? The roster is really shaping up, and I’m extremely excited to see where everything falls.”
Because of the age difference, Grant never played with Townsend at James River, but they’ve played in open gyms and practiced together.
“She’s great,” Grant said. “She’s an amazing athlete. She’s by far the fastest player that I’ve ever seen play. And I’m really excited that she chose Chapel Hill because she’s not just an amazing athlete and basketball player; she’s a winner. She’s an amazing person.”
In the era of the transfer portal and NIL, it may be weeks before Carolina knows who will be on the roster when the season starts. Grant calls the group she knows is returning “amazing” and says “we” when speaking of the Tar Heels’ many injuries last season, including to McPherson, Kelly, Cierra Toomey, Laila Hull and Paulina Paris, who has transferred to Arizona.
“People are getting healthy again,” Grant said. “And I think everything is kind of crescendoing in a really amazing way. Me committing up, I’m ready to go, and I’m ready to earn my stripes. I’m ready to compete in practice. I want to do whatever I can to help this team win and getting there in my first couple of weeks on campus, and in practice, I’m going to learn what my role is. It’s kind of hard to tell right here in the moment.”
The moment she’s been waiting for since that Thanksgiving Day call nearly 29 months ago is a few months away.
Potential UNC 2024–25 roster
| Year | No. | Players | Pos. | Height | |
| Freshman | — | Lanie Grant (5 star) | PG | 5–10 | |
| Freshman | — | Blanca Thomas (5 star) | C | 6–5 | |
| Freshman | — | Jordan Zubich (4 star) | G | 5–11 | |
| RS Freshman | 21 | Ciera Toomey | F | 6–4 | |
| RS Freshman | 4 | Laila Hull | W | 6–1 | |
| Sophomore | 10 | Reniya Kelly | PG | 5–7 | |
| Sophomore | 15 | Sydney Barker | PG | 5–6 | |
| RS Junior | 11 | Kayla McPherson | PG | 5–8 | |
| Junior | 24 | Indya Nivar | G | 5–10 | |
| Senior | 5 | Maria Gakdeng | C | 6–3 | |
| Graduate | — | Grace Townsend | G | 5–5 | |
| Graduate | 20 | Lexi Donarski | G | 6–0 | |
| Graduate | 1 | Alyssa Ustby | F | 6–1 | |
| Graduate | 25 | Deja Kelly | G | 5–8 |
2023–24 UNC players to enter transfer portal
| Class | Player | Date entered | Pos. | Hgt | Next school |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Junior | Paulina Paris | March 26 | G | 5–9 | Arizona |
| Graduate | Ali Zelaya | April 1 | F | 6–4 | UNCW |
| Graduate | Anya Poole | April 1 | F | 6–2 | Clemson |
| RS junior | Teonni Key | April 2 | F | 6–4 | Kentucky |
| Sophomore | RyLee Grays | April 5 | F | 6–3 | Virginia |
| Graduate | Deja Kelly | G | 5–8 | TBA |
Top photo courtesy of FIBA
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