Basketball may be in the thick of its season right now, but Roy Williams still finds time for recruiting. Football season might be freshly over and high schoolers fairly inaccessible, but Mack Brown is making sure he stays at the forefront of the 2021 class’ minds. Both coaches made some significant news this week, and combined with some ratings updates, we’ve got a fairly meaty recruitcap this week. Let’s get to it:

Football:

• You may have seen Al’s article from earlier this week about Grayson Atkins, the FCS All-American placekicker for Furman this past year, grad transferring to UNC for the 2020 season. Go look at it if you haven’t; there’s a bunch of good information about Atkins there. Mack Brown wasn’t done playing with his special teams, though: on Tuesday, he got a high school commitment from a placekicker as well:

According to Tar Heel Illustrated, Burnette will be a preferred walk-on, likely pushing for Jonathan Kim’s spot on the roster. Burnette’s got some credentials, ranking #19 in Chris Sailer’s 2020 kicker rankings, so the weekly kicker competition could get a little spicier in 2020 than it was in 2019.

• Rankings changes will be reflected below, but of note is that with Rivals’ recent rankings update, defensive tackle signee Clyde Pinder, Jr. has earned his fourth star on the 247 Composite. It’s good news for UNC, since the team is losing both starting DTs from the 2019 season and doesn’t have a ton of depth at the position at the moment.
• You may have also seen our post on Monday about Caleb Hood, son of Errol, committing to UNC, making him the second player in the 2021 class to announce his desire to be a Heel. It’ll be surprising if he doesn’t get a chance at playing quarterback, because otherwise he’d likely have held out for a school that would let him play quarterback, but that Jay Bateman was his recruiting leader probably speaks to a future at defensive back or linebacker.

Basketball

• Roy Williams handed out his fifth offer of the 2021 class on Tuesday night, to wing guard Trevor Keels in Fairfax, Virginia. This is a bit of a landmark offer for the class in a few ways: it’s Williams’ first offer to a non-elite player in the class after his first four to consensus top-10, maybe top-5 players; it’s his first offer in one of his traditional recruiting grounds (Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Tennessee aren’t states with particularly notable recent Tar Heel histories). To me, it’s a sign that Williams is turning his focus fully to 2021 now, identifying the guys he’s picking for style, fit, and type while the first four offers were simply his doing his due diligence with some of the best players in the class so he didn’t fall behind.
• That said, he’s not leaving 2020 all the way behind: reports have come out that he stopped to watch both Ziaire Williams and Kerwin Walton, the two uncommitted players with UNC offers in the 2020 class, at some time in the last couple of weeks. There doesn’t look to be an available scholarship for either at the moment, but it’s Roy’s job to manage a roster, so I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.