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College basketball transfer portal: UNC among biggest winners so far amid surge of Tar Heels commitments – 247Sports
North Carolina has landed one of the nation’s best transfer classes in college basketball so far amid a surge of recent Tar Heels commitments. And Eric Bossi, 247Sports national basketball director, picked UNC when asked which teams were impressing in the portal.
“I’m going with Hubert Davis and North Carolina,” Bossi said on 247Sports’ College Basketball Recruiting Weekly. “They added their third and fourth transfers, they’ve got a top five transfer class. Cormac Ryan, I think is maybe being a little bit undervalued in what he can bring transferring from Notre Dame. He’s got a lot of experience. He’s going to be able to step out and knock down an outside shot, which is something they could have used more of last year. Like I said, the experience is huge. But then Harrison Ingram, adding him to Ryan and Jae’Lyn Withers and (Paxson) Wojcik, I love what they did there.
“He’s the guy who got in before he was in the portal even, there were a lot of rumors about that it was going to be Carolina and Kansas and that perhaps Kansas might be tough to beat. But once he got in there, Davis and North Carolina went all-out on him and did not leave … pulled out all the stops to get him and showed a level of commitment to him that Kansas didn’t. And because of that, they were able to land him and even get him to not take a visit to Kansas; I remember getting the phone call from Harrison late on Friday night that he was committing to North Carolina and he made it quite clear that they way they prioritized him and made him feel needed was a big part of that.”
Bossi went on to talk about the fit of 247Sports’ No. 19 overall player in the 2021 class, and the network’s No. 20 overall transfer in this class.
“He’s a guy that didn’t put up huge numbers at Stanford, about 10 and a half points, six rebounds, three and a half assists or so per game, but I think he can really flourish once he gets to Chapel Hill,” Bossi said. “He’s a playmaking 3/4. I think he’s going to have a chance to maybe develop his shooting a little bit, which has been the question, but we’re talking about a former five-star, former McDonald’s All-American and a Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. You add that o the group they’ve got coming in and they’ve got a lot of experience and they’ve filled a lot of holes in their roster. So North Carolina gets my vote.”
Adam Finkelstein, 247Sports director of scouting, said he liked the direction North Carolina was taking its roster.
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“No doubt a big week for North Carolina,” Finkelstein said. “The other thing I really like about the way the 2023-24 roster is shaping up, I just feel like these pieces fit together better. Last year they had a lot of big names. They had the highly ranked transfers. But floor-spacing, continuity didn’t have ball-movers, just roles were not clear, and I think this year, it’s going to be a much more defined team in that regard.”
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