Don’t say I didn’t warn you that this update was going to be pretty listy. The list-releasing has not slowed down since it started in last week’s recruiting recap, especially in basketball. What can I say? School’s about to start for high school kids; it’s a great time to narrow your focus if you’re not quite ready to commit. Anyways, here we go.

Football

• UNC’s biggest fish in the 2020 class, pass rusher Des Evans, has said that he’s ready to release a top 5. He’s starting to feel like the football version of Cole Anthony for UNC, where every indication for months has been that he’s all but locked in to being a Tar Heel, but he’s being deliberate enough with the process to make us sweat. That feeling is only intensified when the UNC team in question isn’t a perennial recruiting powerhouse. Evans visited Virginia Tech recently, but before that, took something like 5 visits to UNC without seeing any other school. It still looks relatively safe, but it’s still early goings.
• We covered Kedrick Bingley-Jones’ commitment on Saturday. UNC’s apparently aiming for a huge defensive line class in 2019, between him, hopefully Evans, Myles Murphy, a Clyde Pinder, AJ Beatty, and potentially Tonka Hemingway, with whom the Heels are locked in battle with South Carolina. Jacolbe Cowan is also on the staff’s wishlist, though he looks fairly enamored with Ohio State.
• Speaking of South Carolina, now’s as good a time as any for our first mention of how vital the UNC-SCAR matchup at the end of this month is for recruiting. The two haven’t been this tightly knit in recruiting for a while, with South Carolina playing and recruiting at a level they haven’t seen for some time and UNC renewing its own interest in players from the Carolinas. A head-to-head matchup will mean a lot to recruits in both states, particularly if Mack Brown turns UNC around to the point where the programs are comparable in winning otherwise.

Basketball

• Well, here come the lists: UNC made the following prospects’ cut-downs: Hunter Dickinson’s Top 7 (Florida State, Purdue, UNC, Notre Dame, Louisville, Providence, Michigan; missed this one last week), Puff Johnson’s Top 7 (Arizona, Pittsburgh, UNC, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Louisville, Miami), Caleb Love’s Top 6 (UNC, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Arizona, Louisville), Isaiah Todd’s Top 5 (Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan, UNC, Memphis), and Greg Brown’s Top 5 (Kentucky, UNC, Memphis, Auburn, Texas).
• We’re still waiting on one from Ziaire Williams, which should come soon. None of these lists tell us too much we didn’t know about the schools that seemed to lead for these guys, but it is interesting that Kentucky has now shown up for Greg Brown. They weren’t in his Top 10 and it’s not totally clear he has an offer from Jim Calipari at all.
• Speaking of Kentucky, Cam’Ron Fletcher committed to the Wildcats on Sunday. Such is life. UNC’s still got a host of wing offers out, several to players ranked higher than Fletcher.
• Visits might start getting scheduled this month, with the massive July Dead Period over with. Caleb Love’s family has already expressed interest in setting up an official with UNC basically ASAP, and he’s likely not the only one. We’ll see how this goes.