Acknowledging the caveat that it came against Arkansas State, Caleb Wilson’s debut for North Carolina was about as good as anyone could have asked for. The 19-year-old five-star true freshman led all scorers with 22 points in the Tar Heels’ 94-54 win on Monday night.
That performance was also historic, even by UNC’s lofty standards. Wilson became the fifth freshman in program history to score 20+ points in the last 30 seasons, joining Cole Anthony, Tyler Hansbrough, Rashad McCants, and Joseph Forte.
Caleb Wilson is the 5th @UNC_Basketball freshman to score 20+ in his debut over the last 30 seasons 🔥 pic.twitter.com/HWgatVD0vF
— ACC Network (@accnetwork) November 4, 2025
Caleb Wilson scores 20 with ease in North Carolina debut
In his postgame comments, Wilson recognized that it’s only going to get harder against better competition. The impressive part of his outing, though, isn’t necessarily the total, but the ease with which his 22 points came.
At 6-foot-10, Wilson is a unique athlete, and that showed up in transition, leading to easy attempts at the rim. He finished 8-for-10 from the field with seven dunks and an open three. The dunks will come throughout the season as long as he runs the floor as aggressively as he did on Monday night, because it seems that the Tar Heels' new-look backcourt with Kyan Evans joining Seth Trimble is more than capable of pushing the ball to get him easy looks.
The question that remains from Wilson’s performance, though, is what his offensive game looks like when he’s expected to create more for himself or be impactful in the half-court. Wilson will be used predominantly as the roll-man when the game slows down against better competition, but with him playing at the power forward next to center Henri Veesaar, and with Trimble’s three-point shooting woes a season ago, the spacing could be an issue.
Wilson went 1-for-1 from deep, and if he shoots it at around a 35-percent clip from beyond the arc, that will go a long way to answer those spacing questions, but that’s a big ask for a true freshman, especially as the physicality ramps up in ACC play. Those tougher tests are upcoming for the Tar Heels, who host No. 7 Kansas at the Dean Smith Center on Saturday night.
Wilson get his first test on Friday night
The Jayhawks’ own five-star freshman Darry Peterson had a strong debut of his own on Monday night, scoring 21 points in 22 minutes against Green Bay. Peterson finished as the No. 1 player in the 2025 recruiting class.
North Carolina seems to have landed a good one in Wilson, a clear one-and-done candidate, but it’ll take more than a 22-point outing in game No. 1 for the Tar Heels to enter the national championship discussion.