UNC Basketball Recruiting: Skyy Clark to North Carolina? Not so fast.
A former UNC basketball recruiting target has decommitted from Kentucky and reopened his recruitment. We don’t know where he’s headed, but we do know that he’s not yet ready to pursue a professional career.
Five-star point guard Skyy Clark announced on Sunday that he had decommitted from the University of Kentucky in order to reopen his recruitment and find a new home for the 2022-23 college basketball season.
After requesting his release from the Wildcats — and receiving it — Clark immediately began hearing from colleges and professional organizations interested in his services for the upcoming season. As expected, Clark’s list of potential suitors is long and distinguished and includes Arizona State, Butler, Georgetown, Gonzaga, Illinois, Marquette, Oklahoma State, South Carolina, Syracuse, Tennessee, Texas A&M, USC, and Xavier.
The NBA G-League and Overtime Elite programs have contacted Clark as well but the Montverde Academy standout has made it clear that he’s not prepared to pursue a professional career for the time being.
I’m not sure where the next stop in my journey will be yet but I do know that stop will be at a university.
— skyy clark (@skyyclark) March 8, 2022
To this point, there’s been no indication that Clark has been in contact with any of the other three schools on his original list of finalists: Memphis, North Carolina, and UCLA. That’s not to say that it couldn’t happen at some point in the future, but Clark will obviously have to take a look at projected rosters and available playing time, given that most teams have already filled out their rosters for next season.
On the other hand, with the NCAA transfer portal being what it is now, there’s always a possibility that roster spots open up for a player looking to find a new home following the current season and heading into the summer months.
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North Carolina, in particular, doesn’t currently have a lot of space for guards not already on their radar. Even if Caleb Love doesn’t return to North Carolina next season, we have to assume that R.J. Davis will. So too will freshman shooting guard D’Marco Dunn and incoming 2022 signee Seth Trimble, a top-10 point guard and the No. 1-ranked prospect in the state of Wisconsin.
Could Love’s departure make way for a player such as Clark to come in and fill a need for the Tar Heels? Clark stated recently that he plans to “take a few weeks” to figure out what he’s going to do next, so perhaps he’s waiting until the current college basketball season is over so that he can make a more informed decision (i.e. early departures, transfers) about where he goes this fall.
Even though the Tar Heels were considered the prohibitive favorite in Clark’s recruitment before John Calipari and the Wildcats lured him to Lexington in the eleventh hour, I wouldn’t expect them to play a major part in it this time around.
I say that not only because of obvious complications regarding the current depth and lack of playing time in the UNC backcourt but also because the great relationship that Clark built with the Tar Heels back then was with a pair of coaches that are no longer in Chapel Hill (Williams, Robinson).
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