Anthony Harris suffered an ACL tear and will miss the rest of the season

Dadgum it.

An already injury-ravaged season for the UNC Tar Heels got worse this morning when the school announced that freshman guard Anthony Harris tore his ACL in a non-contact injury suffered in Sunday's win against Yale. Fortunately, it was not the knee that Harris had been rehabbing to start the season, so the indication is that he was ready to play and should be able to come back at full strength. But it is still just an awful thing to happen for the freshman, who had been electric in the four games he got to play this season with lockdown defense, speed, and timely scoring, including a total takeover of the second half against UCLA. He had scored 28 points in his last three games, showing a threat from the wing that UNC hasn't consistently had this season.

Harris, along with fellow freshman Jeremiah Francis, had been compared by Roy Williams to Tyler Hansbrough in their work ethic to come back from the initial injury, so this new setback is particularly painful for Coach Williams: "This is one of the most heartbreaking injuries one of my teams has ever dealt with," he said. Harris will have surgery next week and presumably begin rehabbing again soon after that. He joins Cole Anthony, Armando Bacot, Brandon Robinson, and Andrew Platek among UNC players to have been injured in the first two months of the season, and he, Francis, and Sterling Manley all started the season unable to play as well. We at Tar Heel Blog extend our heartfelt condolences to Anthony and hope he and the rest of the injured Heels get to 100% with as little trouble as possible.