UNC Basketball: 2020-21 season preview for the Tar Heels

UNC Basketball 2020-21 Season Outlook

After last year’s disaster of a campaign, the 2020-21 season will be a breath of fresh air for UNC players, coaches, and fans alike.

Expectations should be tempered, however. Albeit loaded with promising freshmen and players who project to be legitimate impact players at some point in the future, this is understandably more of a transition year for Roy Williams and North Carolina. So much youthful inexperience will involve inevitable growing pains as the season progresses, particularly in a condensed schedule that allows for little time to ramp up for conference play.

Historically, Williams’ teams are at their best with multiple upperclassman players at the top of the rotation: This year, he only as two, in junior Leaky Black and senior Garrison Brooks. And though Carolina did manage to reach the Elite Eight in consecutive years behind the play of several underclassman contributors in 2011 and 2012, this team doesn’t have as much depth nor a floor general like Kendall Marshall, who grasped the Secondary Break from the get-go.

This team likely won’t compete for a national title, and that’s OK. This is a fun, talented group that will be competitive in an up-for-grabs ACC, a group that could very well find itself making a surprise postseason run by the time March rolls around. Brooks and Caleb Love were both named to the Preseason Naismith Player of the Year Award watchlist, evidence that UNC fans aren’t the only ones high on this team’s potential if everything goes right.

Tar Heel fans should view this year and this recruiting class for what it is — a foundational one, with this year’s holdovers likely making up the core of the next championship-contending team a couple years down the road. Coach Williams is firmly in a groove on the recruiting trail, with 2021 four-stars Dontrez Styles (No. 57) and D’Marco Dunn (No. 77) already on board for next year.

UNC could be in store for a special run in the not so distant future. This year may not result in a fresh banner hanging from the rafters of the Dean Dome, but it’s a step in the right direction.