UNC Basketball: Why the Tar Heels have been so disappointing in 2019-20

Despite their success, UNC Basketball’s recent recruiting is not at the level one would expect from near-perennial NCAA and ACC contenders

There are four programs that are generally accepted as the blue-blood basketball schools: Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina. Historically dominant, these are the only four schools to have breached the 2,000-win mark in NCAA Basketball history. The average fan would most likely infer that given these programs’ status as basketball royalty, they would all be within the highest echelon of recruiting rankings as well. Not quite.

For comparison purposes, I compiled the recruiting class rankings via 247 Sports over the last decade for each of the four blue-blood programs and, after removing each school’s best and worst class ranking, calculated an average. The decision to remove such outliers was made to create some level of statistical legitimacy and also to be as fair to UNC as possible given that the NCAA sanctions placed on them in 2015 left them a recruiting class ranked 70th in the country. Here are the results:

Kentucky: 1.5

Duke: 2.4

Kansas: 11.9

UNC: 12.4

The main takeaway here is that in any given year over the last decade, an average of 10 other schools had a better-recruiting class than the North Carolina Tar Heels. Something else to note is that the first five years of this measurement actually skew in UNC’s favor and the disparity between Kansas and North Carolina would have been larger had I made this a five-year set. Again, I want to be as charitable to the Tar Heels as I can.

From a raw numbers standpoint, UNC Basketball is also a step behind other blue-bloods in quality recruits. Here are the total numbers for ESPN Top 100 Recruits brought in by each program over the last five years:

Kentucky: 25 (18 Five-Star Recruits)

Duke: 24 (18 Five-Star Recruits)

Kansas: 12 (6 Five-Star Recruits)

UNC: 11 (6 Five-Star Recruits)

Here we see that over the last five years, Top 100 Recruits were more than twice as likely to go to Duke or Kentucky versus North Carolina, three times as likely if they were a five-star player.

Simply put, the expectation for great college basketball programs is that they will produce a good amount of NBA talent. This in mind, top-tier programs in turn require excellent recruiting to ensure sustainable success. Some solid four-year college players will hang around and aid this process, but generally speaking, the best players in a program are expected to leave for the next level after a year or two.

Duke and Kentucky’s recruiting has allowed them to stay dominant even with a rotating door of players. Kansas has gotten away with their recruiting because, quite frankly, the Big XII hasn’t been that competitive over the last decade. Unfortunately, North Carolina’s player departures could not be supplanted by a good enough recruiting class to make a successful, well-balanced team. Cole Anthony can’t do it by himself.

And that’s assuming he’s even able to play.