UNC Basketball: Tar Heels crack top 10 in preseason rankings

The UNC Basketball program cracks the Top 10 in the college basketball preseason rankings from this publication

The North Carolina Tar Heels have returned to the court as they begin preparation for the upcoming 2018-19 college basketball season. We are just over a month away from the start of that season and next week will unofficially begin the season with the Late Night With Roy event a week from Friday.

With the new season approaching, the preseason rankings are rolling out. The Tar Heels are currently being ranked inside the top 10 in most publications and just outside the top 10 in other publications.

The latest to release their preseason rankings is Athlon Sports and they are at least showing the Tar Heels a little love.

Athlon Sports released their rankings on October 2nd with Kansas taking the top spot followed by No. 2 Kentucky, No. 3 Duke, No. 4 Gonzaga and No. 5 Nevada. After that, you won’t have to look too far down the list to find the Tar Heels.

UNC is ranked No. 7 in this preseason poll, behind that top 5 and No. 6 Tennessee.

Overall that’s a pretty solid ranking for the Tar Heels going into this season and much better than we have seen in other publications. The general consensus among these preseason rankings is that UNC is a top 10 team and should be considered a contender for the Atlantic Coast Conference as well as the national championship.

As for the ACC, they have a total of seven teams in the top 25 including the Blue Devils, Tar Heels and Virginia (No. 8)  in the top 10. No. 12 Virginia Tech, No. 14 Syracuse, No. 16 Florida State, and No. 22 Clemson round out the ACC teams in this preseason rankings.

For the Tar Heels, they will enter the season with a very talented freshman class with Nassir Little, Coby White and Rechon Black to go along with seniors Kenny Williams, Cam Johnson and Luke Maye. UNC will also return key role players like Sterling Manley, Garrison Brooks, Seventh Woods and Brandon Robinson.

It will be interesting to see how Roy Williams goes about the first few weeks of the season in terms of minutes and the starting lineup.

We will get our first look at who will start when the Tar Heels tipoff the season at Wofford on Nov. 6.

For more on the Tar Heels Basketball program, check back with Keeping It Heel.