Well, they can’t all be weeks like last week, where UNC secured one of its biggest football commitments ever and we got a new name in basketball to search Youtube for highlights with. This week’s more of an anticipatory one, but especially in sports, the anticipation sometimes is the whole point. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the world of UNC recruiting in the past week:

Football:

• Tidewater-area outside linebacker/pass rusher George Wilson is set to commit to a school on Sunday, from a finalists list of UNC, Arizona State, Penn State, and South Carolina. The 247 staff likes UNC’s chances, with 100% of their Crystal Balls going to UNC with pretty high confidence. The Tar Heel staff has done some work on this recruitment, going from outside his top 7 in the spring to presumed favorites now. Wilson’s extremely long and bendy, and with some added weight could become a force as a pass-rusher. We’ll have more on him if he ends up choosing to be a Tar Heel.
• No news yet on whether Tony Grimes will reclassify to 2020 or remain in 2021, but it’s worth unpacking what the former option might mean. As a five-star talent expected to enroll in January, Grimes had the inside track on taking the starting job left behind by Patrice Rene in 2021 as a true freshman, and would have, had things worked out okay, stuck there for 3 years before going league. In a normal year, reclassifying to 2020 in August would make starting as a true freshman a lot harder: he can only get the playbook and get college weight training once he’s signed, which he hasn’t yet, not to mention being a year younger physically than he would have been in 2021. So what probably happens then is that he redshirts his first year, makes 4 appearances, and then only has to play (and hopefully start) two more years before becoming draft-eligible. But in the 2020 we’re living through, football season might well be in the spring, giving Grimes that prep time regardless and setting him up to compete for a starting job early, which gets back to three years of play. None of these is a bad option for UNC, to be clear: guys leaving early, regardless of how much they’ve played for UNC, is good for them and good for the program. It’s just worth thinking about.

Basketball:

• There’s some ugly sentiment out there in the underbelly of sports social media that coaches who stand with their players, say that Black Lives Matter, support players being allowed to profit off their names, images, and likenesses, et cetera nowadays are doing so for recruiting purposes, not because it’s the right thing to do. And with this video having been put out on social media earlier this week, UNC and Roy Williams have been accused of that as well, particularly given their video’s coming after the one made by Duke’s Coach K. It’s an absurd accusation on its face, of course, but just to more firmly bury it, here’s what Sean May has to say:

“It’s about speaking out about what is happening in our country. It didn’t come from a place of trying to recruit kids,” May said. “It’s not about the kids, it’s about the movement, it’s about what’s going on in our communities,

• Nothing going on as far as actual recruits go, though. Rivals’ Eric Bossi has the Heels running 5th out of 7 contenders for unicorn-center Chet Holmgren’s services, saying that though “The Tar Heels have turned up their pursuit lately, and their approach and program history appeal to Holmgren,” UNC’s frontcourt right now is just a bit too stacked to be appealing to a frontcourt player, even one who plays as much on the perimeter offensively as Holmgren. But that’s not a huge surprise; he’s felt either Gonzaga- or G-League bound for a while now.