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NCAA Basketball: Ranking all 18 state of North Carolina teams for 2021-22 season

By Cooper Watson

CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA: A general view of the tip off between the Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels during their game at Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)
CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA: A general view of the tip off between the Duke Blue Devils and North Carolina Tar Heels during their game at Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /
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NCAA Basketball Head coach LeVelle Moton North Carolina Central Eagles (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
NCAA Basketball Head coach LeVelle Moton North Carolina Central Eagles (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /

Only the schools in the state of California have won more combined Division I men’s NCAA Basketball national championships than those in North Carolina. Pound-for-pound, there is not a state in the U.S. with as rich a basketball tradition or history as North Carolina.

Although the Tobacco Road teams are and will always be what fans associate with N.C. hoops, there are now a total of 18 DI programs in the state, including a deeply competitive collection of mid-majors.

Just to clarify, this is a list of team rankings for the 2021-22 season in a vacuum. This is not a list of overall program rankings—just who will have the better on-court product this season.

18. Western Carolina

Former Wake Forest standout Justin Gray will be Western Carolina’s new head coach after just three years as an assistant coach at Winthrop. Ironically, Western’s previous coach, Mark Prosser, took the Winthrop head coaching job in April.

The Catamounts return the tenth lowest percentage of possession minutes in all of college basketball at just 19.0%, per barttorvik.com. This is from a team that went 4-13 in SoCon play last season.

Junior G Travion McCray (9.2 PPG) and super-senior Valpo transfer Nick Robinson (9.1 PPG) should form a respectable backcourt, but the overall lack of depth, star-power and roster continuity coupled with a new coaching staff will lead to a well below .500 outing for the Catamounts in 2021-22.

17. North Carolina Central

Over the past 12 seasons, Levelle Moton has built N.C. Central into one of the premier HBCU and mid-major college basketball programs in the country. In just 10 years as a Division I team, Central has won the MEAC regular-season and tournament title four times each.

That said, this will be a major reset season for Moton and the Eagles, who lost 10 players to the transfer portal this offseason. Of the 14 players who saw the court last season, only three return: G Nicolas Fennell (7.8 PPG), G Alex Caldwell (3.7 PPG), and G Justin Wright (1.3 PPG).

The core of this Central’s production will come from six incoming transfers, although it still seems like a net-negative for a team that went 4-9 last season.

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