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Brady Manek makes his professional basketball debut Friday in the NBA’s 11-day Las Vegas Summer League that begins Thursday. Manek and Day’Ron Sharpe are the only Tar Heels who will play in the league. Each NBA team has representation and will play five games between Thursday and July 16, and every game will be televised.
By R.L. Bynum Justin Jackson was feeling the patriotism as he helped the United States World Cup Qualifying Team advance … More
Led by the national champion women’s lacrosse team, North Carolina finished sixth in the final Division I Directors’ Cup standings for the 2021–22 school year. Coach Jenny Levy’s unbeaten Tar Heels team was one of eight UNC teams to finish in the top 10 in NCAA championship play to help the school finish with an ACC-leading 1,087.25 points. Her team earned UNC 100 points and Coach Hubert Davis’ men’s basketball team earned 90 for playing in the national championship game.
North Carolina men’s basketball will play Indiana next season in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and, for the fourth time in five Challenge meetings, the game will be played in Bloomington, Ind. ESPN announced the Challenge matchups on Friday. The Carolina-Indiana game will be played Thursday, Nov. 30, no doubt at either 9 p.m. or 9:30, although the times weren’t announced. The game will air either on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.
When you lose your final college game that also ends the career of a legendary coach, it’s going to be hard to get over it. Former Duke star Paolo Banchero made that clear in an interview with Complex ahead of Thursday’s NBA draft.
The commitment comes two months later than North Carolina got a key transfer in the last offseason. But the Tar Heels hope that Pete Nance can have the same sort of impact Brady Manek did when he transferred from Oklahoma. Nance’s 3-point shooting percentage last season was better than Manek’s. Nance, the son of former Clemson and NBA star Larry Nance Sr. who played four seasons at Northwestern, will transfer to transfer to UNC after visiting Chapel Hill last week. He announced the news on his Twitter account.
The ACC hasn’t yet released the men’s basketball schedule for next season but the league announced on Wednesday the league opponents for each conference school for the next three seasons. UNC next season will face four of the top five other teams in last season’s ACC standings twice in the Blue Devils, Irish, Deacons and Cavaliers. The Tar Heels meet two of the bottom three teams in the Wolfpack and the Panthers.
CHAPEL HILL — One of the big contrasts between Roy Williams and Hubert Davis was how they handled their rotations. Williams would always play lots of players early in the season and trim his rotation as Carolina got into the bulk of the ACC season. In his first season as head coach, Davis didn’t do that, and stuck to a tight rotation most of the season. Don’t mistake how Davis allocated playing time during his first season as his preference, though. And he says that’s not his decision.
Reggie Bullock couldn’t have had much more contrasting games in the Western Conference semifinals during a week he earned an NBA award. He took 10 shots in both Sunday’s 109–100 Game 3 home loss to the Golden State Warriors and Tuesday’s 119–109 Game 4 home win. He was scoreless on Sunday but scored six 3-pointers and 18 points on Tuesday.
If you’ve watched Carolina’s baseball team emerge from weeks of struggles to finish the regular season with three consecutive ACC series wins and thought that its season trajectory reminds you of the Tar Heels’ men’s basketball team, you aren’t the only one. For Coach Hubert Davis’ basketball team, the low points were the back-to-back road losses to Miami and Wake Forest and the stunning home loss to Pittsburgh. For Coach Scott Forbes’ baseball team, it was losing five consecutive league series before the exam break. They’ve both noticed the similarities. Both rebounded after dealing with early-season criticism of them and their players.
Carolina will face Ohio State on Dec. 17 in Madison Square Garden in next season’s CBS Sports Classic, according to Jeff Goodman of CBS. Kentucky will meet UCLA in the other game in the event’s ninth season.
CHAPEL HILL — Carolina fans will forever remember Caleb Love’s huge 3-pointer with 25 seconds left in Carolina’s Final Four victory over Duke at the Superdome in New Orleans, and now it’s immortalized in the Carolina Basketball Museum. On the half-court in the main part of the museum, there are markers for the biggest shots in program history. Logically, one was added for Love’s 3-pointer over the outstretched left hand of Blue Devils center Mark Williams. That shot was massive as he scored 28 points in beating Duke 81–77 to end Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s career with a loss.
Reggie Bullock scored a career playoff-high 21 points on Friday night but they weren’t enough as the Dallas Mavericks fell behind 2–0 in their Western Conference finals series with the Golden State Warriors. Bullock notched a career playoff-high six 3-pointers in the Mavericks’ 126–117 loss Friday as he put up a 15.4 game score, the second-best of his playoff career. That is topped only by his 15.4 in a 19-point, seven-rebound effort in Game 6 of the series in the last round against the Phoenix Suns.
The latest sign that expectations for Carolina’s men’s basketball season are going to be sky-high is ESPN’s bracket projection for next season.
Such projections in May are, of course, ridiculous, but Joe Lunardi sees the Tar Heels as the No. 1 seed in the East. Under that scenario, UNC would play in Greensboro for the first two rounds and at Madison Square Garden in New York for the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.
Danny Green’s season came to a painful end early in the Philadelphia 76ers’ season-ending loss Thursday but Reggie Bullock made sure to extend his Dallas Mavericks’ season with his best career playoff game. After going scoreless on five shots in Tuesday’s 110–80 Dallas Game 5 loss at Phoenix, Bullock collected 19 points, five 3-pointers, seven rebounds and two steals in Thursday’s 113–86 home victory to force a Game 7 on Sunday in Phoenix.
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