UNC Basketball: The Tar Heels are ranked 15th in ESPN’s Way-Too-

Before the UConn blue confetti could finish falling on the court in Phoenix, ESPN decided to release their way-too-early top 25 rankings for the 2024-25 college basketball season. UNC found themselves on the list at No. 15, making them the highest-ranked ACC team on the list. I am sure you all can guess who is the highest, and I’m sure you can also guess where they are positioned on the list. I will just pause so that you all can finish sighing, rolling your eyes, and then we will proceed.

Are we good now? Okay good.

Anyways, here’s what ESPN’s Jeff Borzello had to say about where he ranked UNC:

How the Tar Heels are ultimately ranked heading into next season will be determined by the decisions of RJ Davis and Harrison Ingram. Davis isn’t likely to be drafted and he still has a COVID year of eligibility, while Harrison Ingram has played himself into the early second-round discussion. Without those two, Hubert Davis will be heavily reliant on returning guards Elliot Cadeau and Seth Trimble, and incoming five-star guards Ian Jackson and Drake Powell.

While it’s always good to be included among the top teams in the country on any list, the fact of the matter is that Borzello explicitly pointed out why doing these rankings now are a bad idea. RJ Davis and Harrison Ingram haven’t even made any decisions about their futures, and really there’s a number of people on that team that still haven’t. The transfer portal makes it extremely hard to get a feel for where any team should be ranked this early, and that includes Carolina. They very well could have more players enter the portal, and they will almost certainly have players transfer into the program as well. All of this doesn’t even factor in the current head coach carousel that is going on right now in college basketball, with the biggest news being the alleged departure of Kentucky’s John Calipari. I get that it’s called “way-too-early” for a reason, but perhaps immediately after a national championship game is pushing it a bit.

Still, UNC should have a good team take the court this fall whether RJ Davis and Harrison Ingram return or not. Hubert Davis put together a really good freshman class, and he did a really good job finding the right pieces for the 2023-24 team in the transfer portal, so one could only hope that he will repeat that success and put together a team that is good enough to return to the Final Four. What do you think of ESPN’s way-too-early rankings? Feel free to let us know in the comments below, and yes, feel free to vent about that very obvious annoying thing in the rankings as well.

Jeff McInnis played for the UNC basketball program from 1993-1996. He was a two-time All-ACC performer and was on the 1995 All-ACC tourney team. McInnis averaged 11.3 points per game over his career and was known as a sharpshooter from behind the arc, shooting 40% from three over his career.

The new head coach at the College of Charleston, Chris Mack, hired McInnis as an assistant coach yesterday afternoon in an effort to bolster his new staff.

McInnis doesn’t have any collegiate coaching experience, but he has experience in coaching overall. McInnis has developed prospects from North Carolina and South Carolina using his Team Charlotte AAU team. McInnis founded the organization in 2009, and he became the head coach at Combine Academy in Lincolnton, N.C., in 2019.

His experience on developing talent and recruiting is very useful to Chris Mack and the Cougars, who’ll likely be starting from scratch after former coach Pat Kelsey took the Louisville job. Charleston’s most notable loss this offseason has been Reyne Smith, who averaged 13 points per game while shooting 40% from three.

McInnis was drafted in the second round of the 1996 NBA Draft by the Denver Nuggets. He had short stints with the Nuggets and Wizards before joining the Clippers in 1999. McInnis found his footing in Los Angeles, and in 2000, he won the league’s Most Improved Player award, averaging 13 points and six assists per game. The next season he averaged a career-high 15 points per game and six assists per game. From there, he had stints with the Blazers, Cavaliers, Nets, and Bobcats before calling it a career in 2008. McInnis finished with career averages of nine points, four assists, and two rebounds per game.

It will be interesting to see what dynamic McInnis will add to Chris Mack’s coaching staff in 2024. The two will embark on a big journey to rebuild a Charleston program that has had lots of recent success. The Cougars won the CAA back-to-back years with Pat Kelsey at the helm and have also made the NCAA tournament the last two seasons.