What’s the ceiling for UNC men’s basketball for 2023-24?

Associated Press men's basketball poll was unleashed yesterday. A glaring lack of ACC representation.

Only three in the poll, and I think only one in the also receiving votes. It's kind of been a spiral of ACC. I mean, look, we've had good teams. Florida State and Duke went to the Final Four two years ago. Duke won the league last year, was very good, just didn't have great success in the NCAA tournament. Miami ended up going far, but overall it's been great. Brendan Marks covers the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils, who are both represented in this poll.

Duke at number two, North Carolina at number 19. Mr. Marks, how you doing? I'm doing very well. Coming out of my summer hibernation just in time for basketball.

You have had a busy summer though, so congratulations on everything for you this summer. So let's, yeah, let's get down to business while we're here. I want to start with the Tar Heels, which for a lot of people, judging by what they did last year, they would go, why are they ranked other than North Carolina, which as a former voter, I can see. So tell me, what do you think the ceiling is for this group? Yeah, you know, I might be in the minority here, but I'm actually, I'm fairly cautiously optimistic about North Carolina this year. I think that, you know, obviously you can look at last year and what happened, uh, cannot go anywhere near how the Tar Heels expected it to, but at the same time, this is a new year and it's an entirely new team. Uh, Hubert Davis loses eight, nine guys from last year's team and brought in a number of really high impact transfers and freshmen. So, you know, to me, to most casual observers, you're going to look at this roster, you're going to go, okay, I know Armando Baycock, that guy's still in college.

Okay. I know RJ Davis. That guy's right. And I know that after that, it's a bunch of new faces, but I think Hubert Davis deserves a lot of credit. He looked at what North Carolina did poorly last year. And the two things that it did worse were three point shooting. Second were three point shooting percentage in UNC history and the fewest assist in North Carolina history. Since that stat became recorded, he very intentionally went out, added shooters, added passers added playmakers.

And for all those reasons, I think North Carolina's offense will be much improved. Let's talk about one of the newcomers. I hate to start this and not start with Armando Baycott, who's sort of like the furniture over in the Dean Smith Center. I mean, it is amazing. He's still there. And I applaud it because, first of all, he's killing it in NIL money and he should.

This is exactly what NIL was for. I mean, he is the poster child for what it was for because it is corporate money coming to him for all that he has accomplished. And he is a face of the program right now. But I want to talk about Cormac Ryan, who is the shooter. He's sort of a gritty, maybe not necessarily a clean player too, from what we gather. What has he brought to this group?

Yeah. From talking to people around the program, he might not end up being the quote unquote best transfer that North Carolina brought in this summer. But I do think he has a chance to be the most impactful. Again, it gets back to that self-scouting Hubert Davis had to do over the summer. He looked at his roster and said, look, we can't shoot the ball.

We're going to be losing a lot of experience. So what does he do? He goes out and he adds a guy who's been a three-time captain at Notre Dame, who's played in well over 120 games in his college career, who has tons of experience, started on a sweet 16 team two years ago.

And again, shoots the absolute lights out of the ball. So I think in Cormac Ryan, what you get is you get somebody at North Carolina who's really going to hold people accountable. So, you know, you look at what happened last year and with Caleb Love, RJ Davis, I'm on the big cut, Leaky Black, Pete Nance, you had all these experienced guys and yet you never really felt like it was a unified team or like it was one where guys were held accountable for their mistakes.

We saw the same train wreck over and over and over again. If you talk to people around the program about Cormac this summer, he has instantly changed that he is not afraid to get up in anybody's face. He's in his last year of college basketball.

He wants to win. You know, I think in that sense, the desire to win in his last year, you know, not to use this name lightly, but it's Brady manic life in terms of the demeanor. So if he can shoot the ball like Brady manic, that would obviously help a whole lot too, but just starting and coming in with accountability, having a guy who's willing to get in guy's skin. I think that's hugely important or something North Carolina needed last season.

I was thinking about the name Brady manic, as you were describing the impact that it Cormac Ryan has had on this team, Brendan Marks from the athletic covers Carolina and Duke joining us here in the Adam Gold show. I want to ask you about a couple of players who are coming back that didn't get a chance to play last year. And there may be others because there were a lot of players that didn't get a chance to play the one I thought legitimate criticism of Hubert Davis is how little he utilized his bench. Jalen Washington going to figure into the mix, Seth Trimble. How many other guys that were here last year are going to factor in on this team? Well, those are the only two. So, okay, well, I named them all. I assumed there were more, but I guess not. So that, I mean, that speaks to how much turnover this team had, though, you know, most of those guys looked and said, hey, we're not getting minutes.

Clearly, you know, there's something that we're not doing. We're out of here, but Seth and Jalen are both back. And I think both guys have an opportunity to play into the rotation. Like, you know, obviously RJ Davis at point guard, he's going to be the guy for North Carolina this year.

I'm really interested to see what he does. I think he could have an all American type year now that he's not sharing the back court with Caleb love. And so Seth is obviously not going to be starting over him, but as somebody who can come in, can lead the second unit, you know, talking to him at media day a couple of weeks ago, he said the biggest thing for him was, you know, it got to the point last season where he was such a reluctant shooter that teams would start playing him eight, nine feet off, you know, kind of like how I would play somebody like in the local media at a pickup game.

Uh, he just wasn't really respected and that gets in your head. And so he said as much as he worked on his shot this summer, he really worked on that part of it too. And he's probably the best athlete on the team, to be honest with you. So I think there's certainly a role for him figuring into the back court mix and Jalen Washington, you know, I think North Carolina's four position is probably it's resettled right now. Um, a couple of weeks out from the start of the season between Jalen Washington, Zayden high, who's been a really surprising freshman, maybe Harrison Ingram, who's probably more of a three, like all of those guys are going to factor into the mix. And I think for Jalen Washington, it's just being healthy at this time last year, he was still recovering from a torn ACL.

Now he's not, he's actually getting a workout. So I think both of those guys are going to have to be a part of the rotation this year. Hubert Davis doesn't have that top end talent, besides Baycott and RJ Davis to where he can afford to play just five guys.

So those opportunities should be there. They're going to have to make the most of them to stay in the rotation. Brendan Marks from the athletic. Let's go to the other team that you cover here.

The team that happened to be ranked number two by the AP, three by the coaches. We spoke to John Shire last week. He's obviously high on Kyle Filipowski, who's coming back from hip surgery and the off season. But what are your thoughts on year two from or for Tyrese Proctor? Yeah, I think he's got total breakout potential. I mean, just just this morning we were submitting our athletic staff votes for, you know, who do we think is going to be player of the year?

Who do we think is going to be all Americans, et cetera, et cetera? I put Tyrese Proctor on my second team, all American team. I think he is going to be that good this year. I think that, you know, if you look at what he did from the middle of January on last year, that's the player that I expected to see back in November. And it took him a couple of months to get to that point. I think he was shooting like nine percent up until January.

But after that, he sort of showed you everything that you thought you were going to see. He's a bigger guard. He's six five. He's got long arms.

He's lanky. He can get in passing lanes. Again, he really improved this shooting over the back half of the year. Incredible from the free throw line. And as we saw in Duke season ending loss to Tennessee, he was absolutely destroying Tennessee's drop coverage and pick and rolls.

I mean, he was making the perfect read and the perfect pass every time. So, you know, like I know that Kyle Philipowski has gotten a lot of hype this off season and understandably so, but to me, you look at this team and like Tyrese Proctor is the guy who elevates it. We know Jeremy Roach is going to be, you know, what he is at this point.

It's his fourth season. You know, Mark Mitchell, I think is a valuable glue guy. Obviously, Philipowski is your go to inside. But as we know, guards win in March. And I think that Tyrese Proctor is the best one Duke has. And so, you know, I really do think that for as good as the rest of this team is, like he's the guy to me who if he takes his game to the level that he can, that's I think what makes Duke a national championship.

All right. Final thing for Brendan Marks covers the Blue Devils and the Tar Heels for the athletic. In the past several years, it's always been about the newcomers for Duke. It I mean, it is to an extent this year. But, you know, with Proctor and Philipowski and Roach and Mitchell and I mean, there are other players. I mean, what? I mean, Ryan is still there.

Who are the who is the newcomer or newcomers that are going to have big impacts on this team? Yeah. You know, I think top of the list is Jared McCain.

He was a five star top 15 player in this recruiting class. But he was just a TikTok guy. Yeah, that too.

That too. I wouldn't, I wouldn't know. I'm not a great TikToker, but you wrote about it. I tried to, I tried to, I downloaded the app and everything, but Jared is, Jared is the guy that fans should know in terms of newcomers. You know, it sounds like he is going to be Duke's fifth starter. He's going to be, you know, sort of the third guard next to Tyrese Proctor and Jeremy Roach. And again, it's a case of John Shire, like recognizing what his team was bad at last year and now trying to plug that hole.

So last year Duke was 198th in the country and three point percentage only made, I think 33 and change. And so you bring in a guy who is known for being a sharpshooter. Um, you know, this summer McCain was at the Chris Paul elite camp. He is at the Nike Academy. You know, he's playing against the best high schoolers and college prospects in the world.

And by all accounts, he was, he was sort of dominant in both performances. So, you know, I think he is good enough that we're talking about a situation and we'll get into this in six months or whatever. Like he is good enough that we're talking about a situation where Duke's entire starting lineup could go pro. Um, but for him, you know, it's bringing that shooting piece. It's being, you know, you've got Philipowski inside, you've got Proctor and Jeremy are sort of running things. Mark Mitchell's the blue guy do everything.

McCain needs to be a knockdown shooter. He can be. Um, but obviously as we saw with Proctor last year, there's, there's a transition period for some freshmen.

So I guess we'll see what his is. Uh, I know, uh, there's a lot expected of this team and John, but by the way, is John Shire going to play faster than they did last year? That was Virginia levels of slow last year.

Listen with the guys he's got in the back court, it would be criminal not to. So, you know, like I think everybody got so used to like for, for John last year, like, you know, you, you're playing so big, you're the biggest team in the country, your defense, whatever. Like I think people expect that's going to be a year in thing. Like, no, they're going to be totally different this year.

So like not to criticize coach K, because, you know, I think you could make the argument, he's the greatest coach of all time. By the end of his tenure, I don't know that he was necessarily matching what he was trying to do to his personnel as much as I think we're going to see from John this year in terms of difference from year one to year two, looking forward to it, looking forward to your coverage, Brendan, I appreciate your time, uh, back to work. Now it starts in about two and a half weeks.

Listen, I'm trying to, trying to enjoy every last bit that I can until then, but looking forward to it as well. Hi, man. Thank you very much. Brendan Marks from the athletic at Brendan R. Marks on X. Are you unhappy with your CPAP provider? Did you know you can easily switch providers right now? I'm Megan Giggling, general manager of Parkway Sleep Health Centers. We are North Carolina's number one source for CPAP machines and supplies. Contact us today.

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