NCAA Basketball: Baylor rises, Kentucky falls in latest 2023-24 WTE power rankings

12. North Carolina

Hubert Davis’s first season saw the Tar Heels head to the national championship game as an 8-seed. Last year was not so fortunate. North Carolina started the year as the preseason #1 team but quickly fell out of the rankings and didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament, finishing the season just 20-13, barely above .500 in conference play. Will things go better this season?

We already know that Caleb Love is off to Arizona and the Tar Heels also lost Leaky Black and Pete Nance, but this roster still has a flurry of talent. Both Armando Bacot and RJ Davis are back, while the Transfer Portal has been kind to the Tar Heels, giving them Harrison Ingram from Stanford, Cormac Ryan from Notre Dame, and Paxson Wojcik from Brown. 5-star point guard Elliot Cadeau highlights the freshman class of a roster that looks reloaded and ready to bounce back.

Can they bounce back after what transpired last season? Some have argued it’s addition by subtraction when they lost a few of those key players, including Love, but only time will tell. Davis effectively rebooted the roster with these new additions. North Carolina isn’t exactly at the top of anyone’s lists early this year, though they’ll have plenty of time to prove us wrong.