UNC Basketball: Scouting report of Tar Heel guard Anthony Harris
By Trevor Marks
Anthony Harris has battled consecutive knee injuries that cut his junior and senior high school seasons short. What could the incoming four-star guard bring to UNC Basketball once he’s healthy?
Anthony Harris is always running.
Careening through traffic in the open court for transition opportunities, chasing defenders around screens and hounding them on the ball, and hunting down loose balls and 50-50 plays, Harris is always looking to run, run, and run some more.
It’s who the 6-foot-3 combo guard is as a player. He’s fast, both in terms of his sheer speed and his perpetual attack-centered mindset, where he always wants to push the pace.
His speed helps him on the court and has helped the Virginia native climb up to four-star status on national recruiting rankings, earning him scholarship offers from numerous power conference programs.
Harris’s combination of speed and perimeter shooting at either guard spots made him a perfect fit for Buzz Williams’ pro-style offense at Virginia Tech, which made his decision to commit to the hometown team extremely reasonable. And then, following Williams’ decision to bounce from Blacksburg to College Station to coach Texas A&M, it made perfect sense for the talented guard to decommit and find himself at another program with a run-and-gun style that fit Harris’s game: UNC.
Harris rounded out a stacked 2019 recruiting class for Roy Williams and the fresh-faced North Carolina Tar Heels in April, adding another talented guard to a UNC Basketball roster that lost five of its top-six rotation players — Coby White and Nassir Little to the NBA Draft; Luke Maye, Kenny Williams, and Cameron Johnson to graduation; and Seventh Woods to the transfer market.
A quick glance at Anthony Harris on a basketball court and it’s obvious why Roy Williams saw him as a necessity in his high-octane offense. Harris can man either guard spot (although he’s evidently more comfortable as a secondary playmaker as a two-guard), showcases positive speed with and without the ball, is capable of making linking passes along the perimeter, and possesses great touch — including a damn good .464/.438/.821 shooting split in EYBL play last year.
His speed is great. It helps him create opportunities for himself and his teammates, an undeniable positive impact on his team. But, likewise, his always-attacking mindset can be damaging for his own team just the same, as he’s a work-in-progress in terms of his patience, technique, and IQ/awareness as a player.
Anthony Harris is a mixed bag as a 19-year-old guard, and although he looks to be a promising multi-year guard for the Tar Heels, there’s work to be done.