I’ll say this: Roy Williams is not letting himself be burned again like he was last year. Though he ended up with a great class after securing the commitments of two graduate transfers, he’s publicly said, unsurprisingly, that he’d rather have a class filled with freshman than finish one up with graduate and non-graduate transfers. And while he still seems to be approaching recruiting with the mindset that he’s in every recruitment he enters until he is told straight-up that he’s not, he’s also entering more races earlier than he has before. I’ll have more about this in the basketball section, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Football:

• A premium-locked article on Inside Carolina is titled “UNC Legacy Caleb Hood Nearly Takes the Dive,” which I assume means that he was at UNC’s only home game so far (Miami) and almost committed on the spot. Caleb, son of standout UNC DB Errol, has been offered as an athlete (likely DB), though he plays quarterback for his high school team. That could only be a good sign moving forward, as well as the fact that his Crystal Ball right now is 100% for UNC. Hood is in the class of 2021, by the way
• Speaking of potential 2021 QBs, UNC has exactly one offer out to a 2021 QB who isn’t either committed elsewhere or no longer interested in UNC, and that’s to Garrett Nussmeier out of Texas. I talked about him a little bit a couple weeks ago, so it’s good to see that he remains in the picture. We’ll keep you posted as this situation moves along.

Basketball

• I missed this last week, and that’s my bad: UNC’s officially out of the running for Jaden Springer, as he’s cut his list down to Memphis, Tennessee, and Michigan. This hurts, because he’s from Charlotte, but it is what it is. In the meantime, DJ Steward also removed himself from UNC’s consideration by committing to Duke earlier this week.
• I didn’t write too much yesterday about where Kerwin Walton’s offer fits into the rest of UNC’s offered 2020 class, because I wanted to keep the focus on the player himself. But here’s the long and short of it: this feels like Roy Williams learning from his getting burned by Zeke Nnaji last year. Then, after he’d already been officially spurned by Josh Green, Keion Brooks, Wendell Moore, and others, he offered Nnaji a month before his scheduled decision, and while Nnaji apparently loved everything about UNC, he just didn’t have enough time to form a relationship the way he did with his other offered schools, and he’ll be suiting up in Arizona this fall. Coincidentally, Roy’s hitting the same school that he did for Nnaji in the wake of Springer and Steward no longer considering UNC and Puff Johnson’s recruitment trending away from the Heels as well, but this time, he’s giving himself ample time to form the kind of relationship he needs to win a recruitment.
• And finally, UNC made the top 7 for 2020 big Dawson Garcia. He and Day’Ron Sharpe together could be really fun as a hi-lo tandem, more so than UNC’s other big man offers in the class, so that’s exciting.