Inside Carolina welcomes the three freshman to campus this week with a feature from Inside Carolina: The Magazine chronicling how Kendall Marshall, Reggie Bullock and Harrison Barnes became Tar Heels. The article is well worth the read to see how each player arrived in Chapel Hill. It also reveals that Roy Williams’ top recruiter is Kendall Marshall?
“I’d hear from Kendall every now and then. He’d say he wants to play with me and Carolina was the right place,” Barnes said. “Kendall did a good job—needless to say—of recruiting me. But the thing I enjoyed the most was the friendship that developed out of that.”
After already helping the Heels land Tyler Zeller and Dexter Strickland in his first four months as a Heel, Marshall wouldn’t deny he talked to recruits about Carolina, but he didn’t consider it recruiting.
“The way I look at it, I’m just getting to know kids and becoming friends with them and we just happen be looking to go to college,” Marshall said. “The summer circuit and playing basketball is a great way to meet a lot of people.”
The downside is Marshall is no longer on the summer circuit talking to other recruits.
Sean May commented on Twitter last night that he played his first game with the freshmen and he liked what he saw.
Also of note. All three players have said one of their summer school classes is public speaking. I am curious as to whether Roy Williams or Steve Kirschner suggested(required?) they take that class to better prepare them for dealing with the media.
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I have a feeling that Reggie Bullock will become a fan favorite, among other things for his anti-Duke comments at the McD’s festivities. He’ll make Kirschner sweat but the fans will love it.
I’m just glad we have three kids coming in with the right amount of swagger combined with the right amount of work ethic. I think that’s what the team was really missing last year. Everyone was either all swagger, or all work… or, in some cases, neither. I missed that from 2009.
1993 – Stackhouse, Wallace, McGinnis
1995 – Carter, Jamison, and Okaluja
2002 – McCants, Felton, and May
2006 – Lawson, Wright, and Ellington
2010 – Barnes, Bullock, and Marshall
IF history is any indication, I like Carolina’s chances the next couple years with this trio, and yes I know some of these classes included additional players, but I’m just considering the top 3 that had major impacts during their freshman years.
^ adding McAdoo to this class, really can make it scary…
^ Yeah if we went down to the 4th member of classes, McAdoo would certainly be an upgrade from Byron Sanders/ Damion Grant in 2002 and Thompson / Stepheson in 2006. 1993 and 1995 were only 3 man classes.
It was always my understanding that Dean Smith required all of his players to take a public speaking course. If that is correct I would assume that tradition continues. I’ve always found the UNC basketball team members to be among the most articulate of players during interviews. They never seem to start or end every single sentence with, “ummm, you know”, like some athletes do. I did notice last year that some of the underclassmen had a little bit of that problem though. Maybe it used to required after the freshman year, and has been changed to before the freshman year?
I just took a trip to campus to get some last minute stuff done before I leave town for my research, and ran into a duo of Barnes and Marshall. They both looked a little dazed, with the typical look of new first-years that have just arrived on campus. I welcomed them to town, and they both politely thanked me.
A few minutes later as I was leaving, I cracked up because Kendall was trying to go into the Undergraduate Library the wrong way and the doors wouldn’t open – classic freshman mistake!
I also ran into one of the assistant basketball coaches from my high school (which is where Roy used to coach) and he invited me to come watch some of them play on Tuesday. He said that he thought Lawson and company would be there, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Regardless, it will be a good Carolina basketball refresher for the summer before I head out.