In a sudden announcement, Roy Williams and Larry Drew have announced that the latter is leaving the basketball team, effective immediately. It's a huge blow to a team that has just hit its stride in recent weeks.
Drew, of course, lost the starting job to Kendall Marshall after the Georgia Tech game, but was still playing roughly the same number of minutes as before. His game had improved after the lineup change, and Williams seems to be at a loss as to why this is happening.
I'm not comfortable speculating, but I will point out that Williams was informed of this by Drew's father, currently the coach of the Atlanta Hawks. (Roy has got to be dreading phone calls from parents at this point, hasn't he?) Couple that with the early criticism this season that his step down in play was the result of him trying to display the skills he'd need in the NBA, and you have to consider his professional aspirations as a possible cause. Not much else explains why he would leave suddenly, despite not bring able to play college ball elsewhere until Fall 2012. Drew apparently really does not want to be seen as having lost the starting job.
Either way, it's a blow to both the team and Drew himself, a player who has had the roughest ride of any Carolina player over the past two and a half seasons. He's leaving a lot of people in the lurch; I hope it works out for him, at least.