UNC held their annual awards banquet Thursday evening but without revealing the future intentions of Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington. Tyler Hansbrough was the MVP and was also honored for highest FG percentage and the top rebounder. Marcus Ginyard was named best defensive player and along with most inspirational and improved Quentin Thomas was named a permanant captain. Other awards included Danny Green: highest FT percentage, Ty Lawson: most assists and Bobby Frasor: AD scholarship award.
As for the news everyone was really interesting in, it is still forthcoming. According to Roy the process is still ongoing and he is still talking to teams which by tomorrow will number 18. Of course there are only 10 days left until the deadline and assuming we go through the weekend without an annoucement(very probable) it means when we get to next week it will almost have to be a any day now sort of thing.
There were rumors through the day that Hansbrough and Lawson would stay but not Ellington was indecisive, I still do not necessarily dismiss that as true. Obviously the idea it was coming at the banquet turns out to be incorrect but the "process" Roy spoke might only be for Ellington's benefit. Speculation along those lines would include waiting for all three to be ready to announce something and not wanting to draw focus off the team for the banquet as the justications for keeping things quiet for now. Then again there is no reason to doubt Roy's assertion that all three are still undecided which is to say I have no idea.
So we wait and one reason this seems to be taking longer, as Roy pointed out, is the season ended for UNC a week later. In actuality it ended two weeks later than the same point last season. Because the NCAA wants the championship played on the 1st Monday in April the whole season shifted a week later to accomodate that. Last season UNC lost to Georgetown on March 25th and the deadline was April 29th which was a full 34 days. By the time UNC had it's banquet on April 10th which was a full 16 days after the season ended meaning there was over two weeks of time to gather the information. This season the Final Four occurred a week later on the calendar than last season and because UNC was in it meant the season ended two weeks later as compared to last season. The draft deadline, however, is still roughly at the same time. Roy's efforts to ascertain his players' draft status has only been going for 13 days which is still short of the time taken to make the same decision last season.
As I said, this will go down next week for sure and since there will likely be a press conference you can beat it not go into the following weekend.