UNC Basketball: Tar Heels fall in Way-Too-Early Top 25 for 2017

ESPN has come out with their updated Way-Too-Early Top 25 rankings for next year and Carolina’s spot may surprise you.

With only a couple uncommitted players and grad transfers left to make their decisions, most rosters are set and ready for the 2017-2018 basketball season.

There was a lot of shakeup in college basketball over the past two weeks as players declared for the draft and stayed in, while others decided to go back to college for at least another year.

For the Tar Heels, the news broke yesterday that freshman forward Tony Bradley would keep his name in the draft, forgoing his final three years of eligibility.

The only news we wait on now is if Pitt will make the RIGHT decision and grant grad transfer Cam Johnson the ability to transfer to UNC without having to sit out a year.

With all that said, Carolina is ranked No. 7 in the rankings. Previously they were ranked No. 2 but that was before the Tony Bradley news.

To me, the new ranking seems just about right. Obviously, the Tar Heels return a lot of experience, but they also graduated three significant players from last year’s team and lost two players early to the draft.

Here is a snippet of what ESPN’s Myron Medcalf had to say about the Tar Heels:

"” Joel Berry II, last year’s Most Outstanding Player in the Final Four, could enter next season as the favorite to win the Wooden Award. Add five-star recruit Jalek Felton and a collection of talented reserve guards who will log more minutes in 2017-18, and the Tar Heels will again aspire to contend for the ACC title and more. But a team that dominated the offensive glass last season just lost the four players who helped them finish first in offensive-rebounding rate on KenPom.com.”"

The Tar Heels are looking at this projected lineup; Berry, Williams, Pinson, Maye, Brooks/Huffman.

Though they bring back one of the most experienced and battle tested backcourt’s in the country, the frontcourt will be extremely young and inexperienced.

With three freshman and junior Luke Make, there are still a lot of question marks.

In my mind, they will hang around the top 15 all year. College basketball is all about how good your backcourt is. Guards are the one’s who will lead you to a national championship, and that is what Carolina has.

This will be quite a different team than what Coach Williams is used to. So to all the people with the “Fire Roy” campaign every year in November and December, why don’t you chill out and remember that we have a Hall of Fame coach who is coming off of his third National Championship. Where are you at now?

The school in Durham is ranked a couple spots ahead, at #5.

If you can remember back to last year at this time, Duke was basically named “The best team in college basketball history” with what they were bringing in. We all know how that turned out, with another early round exit in the big dance.

Duke once again brings in another extremely talented recruiting class to go along with a handful of players who have been in the program already.

This team will be nowhere as talented as last year, but will have enough talent to hang around the top 15 all year as well. They will go as far as Grayson Allen takes them. It’ll just depend which Allen shows up.

I know you are ready to lock in your national champion for next year, and as of now everyone seems to be picking Arizona. They are the No. 1 ranked team in Myron Medcalf’s Way-Too-Early Top 25.

With starters Allonzo Trier, Rawle Alkins, Dusan Ristic, and Parker Jackson-Cartwright returning for the Wildcats they already have a great rotation.

Arizona also adds forward DeAndre Ayton, the No. 2 ranked player in the country,  former UNC target Brandon Randolph and recently reclassified five-star wing Emmanuel Akot to the rotation.

The Wildcats will once again have one of the most talented rosters in the country. And once again, they will ride their overrated ranking all the way to yet again another Sweet 16 or Elite Eight exit.

I know my opinion will not go over well with many others, but I will say it again; Sean Miller is one of the most overrated COACHES in the country. He can recruit with the best of them, but not one Final Four yet. The drought continues.

Rounding out the top five is Kansas, Michigan State, and Kentucky.

Both Kansas and Michigan State return most of their rotation from the year before as well as adding some nice pieces. Kansas gets Mississippi State transfer Malik Newman, former top-10 recruit, eligible at the start of the year and Arizona State transfer, Sam Cunliffe, eligible after the first semester.

Michigan State returns projected lottery pick Miles Bridges and also gets the addition of Ben Carter and Gavin Schilling, who missed all of last season due to injuries.

Along with another bolstered recruiting class for Calipari, Kentucky got great news last night as projected first round pick Hamidou Diallo decided to return to Lexington. Diallo enrolled early at Kentucky last semester but didn’t play a single game.

Related Story: UNC Responds to Third NOA

Three other ACC teams are ranked In the top 25 (Louisville, Miami, Notre Dame).