ACC Basketball: Analyzing each team’s returning impact players for 2023-24

North Carolina

UNC took arguably the biggest hit of all power 5 teams when it came to players leaving after the  2022-2023 season. Coming into the season the entire college basketball world had expectations that the roster could never even begin to live up to. And this lack of success (Compared to projections) has now hurt them drastically going into next season. They lost a total of 7 players to the transfer portal including leading scorer in Caleb Love, and on top of that they lost both a 10-point-per-game scorer in Pete Nance and also the heart of the team in Leaky Black to graduation.

But despite this, all hope is not lost for the Tar Heels as they were able to keep the two best players on the roster for another season. Both R.J. Davis and Armando Bacot have opted to return to the team, which at the very least boosts this team’s floor to among the middle of the ACC, and its ceiling near the top.

Regardless of how disappointing the season may have been for the Tar Heels as a whole, R.J. Davis was anything but disappointing in his Junior year. He was able to improve statistically in both points (16.1 per game) and rebounds (5.1 per game(extremely impressive for a guard listed at 6’0 175 pounds)) and he was able to do so while also having his most efficient season to date. He was also able to put up these numbers with a very ball-dominant backcourt partner in Caleb Love who put up over 15 shot attempts per, so in this next season we should be able to see Davis finally step all the way into the spotlight, and shoot at a higher clip than we’ve seen at this point in his career.

When it’s all said and done, Armando Bacot’s career at UNC will be a legendary one. He’s the program’s all-time leader in rebounds and double-doubles while also having surpassed Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list to put him at 14th of all time. And now, with Bacot returning for one final run, the storied career only continues to grow. In 2023 Bacot was named as an AP All-American and was also able to secure his second straight All ACC First Team nod.

Behind Zach Edey, Bacot is the best-returning center in all of college basketball, and with Caleb Love transferring away it’s likely his numbers of 15.9 points and 10.4 rebounds per game will rise even higher this following season as he looks to lead the Tar Heels down the road to redemption after this past season struggles.