UNC Basketball: 10 recruits UNC fans wish the Tar Heels had signed
Andrew Wiggins
Florida State, Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina. Those were the four finalists for the country’s No. 1-ranked high school basketball player in 2013.
The hype surrounding Andrew Wiggins’ recruitment was unlike any we’d seen in a while, including that of Harrison Barnes, who’d committed to North Carolina just a few years prior. Only this time, it wasn’t the Tar Heels that got a commitment from the nation’s top-rated player. Or the Wildcats. Or the hometown Seminoles that many believed — or maybe just hoped — that Wiggins would commit to over the three blue bloods that had each seen so much success on the recruiting trail over the past few seasons.
Alas, it was the Jayhawks that got Wiggins’ pledge in late spring of 2013, and the 5-star wing moved to Lawrence, Kansas just a couple of months later to prepare for what everyone knew would be his only season of college basketball.
Billed as a player with the skills to match his tremendous athleticism, Wiggins had a nice season at Kansas, but it wasn’t quite what fans and pundits may have expected from the highly touted, widely sought-after prospect. He did win a number of honors including first team All-Big 12, Big 12 Freshman of the Year and consensus first team All-American, so it’s not like he didn’t have an above average year; because he did. However, the expectations for Wiggins were unfair from the start, to say the least.
After being selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers with the first pick of the 2014 NBA Draft, Wiggins was named to the league’s All-Rookie first team, as well as earning Rookie of the Year honors. And while Wiggins has put together a nice five-year run with the Minnesota Timberwolves — who he was traded to when Kevin Love joined LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland — he’s yet to earn a single All-Star bid.
Again, that’s not to say that Wiggins hasn’t been good, because he has been. And he’s also proven to be extremely durable through his first half-decade in the league, playing in no fewer than 73 games in any of his five seasons, and all 82 in three. It’s safe to say, however, that he still hasn’t been able to live up to the lofty expectations that outsiders set on him when he was barely old enough to drive a car.
Still, though, Wiggins is a player that the Tar Heels could have used during the 2013-14 season when they lacked star-power from anyone other than sophomore point guard Marcus Paige. The 24-10 Tar Heels would have done well to replace the recently departed Reggie Bullock with Wiggins, and almost certainly would have made it past the second round of the NCAA Tournament where they ultimately ended their season in an 85-83 loss against Iowa State.