UNC Recruiting Week of 8/2: Four-star 2022 recruit Tyler Nickel includes the Tar Heels in his top 5

Welcome to this week’s recruiting update! This week we will discuss a new preferred walk-on for the football team, and also the basketball team made a recruit’s top five list. Let’s jump right into this week’s news.

Football

Tuesday night on Twitter, Bibb County High School offensive lineman Bo Burkes announced his commitment to the Tar Heels as a preferred walk-on.

There isn’t a great deal of information out there on Burkes, but what we do know is that he is a three-star recruit according to the 247Sports rankings (not to be confused with their composite rankings, they currently don’t have one for him), and is the 97th best inside offensive lineman in the country. He is also the first preferred walk-on in the 2021 class, and held offers from the Air Force, Akron, Ole Miss, Memphis, and Southern Miss.

Basketball

Four-star 2022 prospect Tyler Nickel announced the five schools he will be focused on for the rest of his recruiting process, and he will take official visits to each school starting in October. His final list includes UNC, Butler, Iowa, Virginia Tech, and LSU. What’s interesting about him having Butler on his list is that 247Sports had them listed as “cool” in his recruiting, but NC State was “warm.” Obviously these labels are never set in stone, and unfortunately for the Wolfpack they will have to move on to the rest of their recruiting board.

Nickel spoke with 247Sports about each school remaining on his list. Here’s what he had to say about UNC:

“I feel like I have a really good relationship with Coach (Hubert) Davis. He’s made it very clear to me how important I am to them and what I would bring to the table. He’s also built a good relationship with my family and I. He feels like someone you can trust the more and more you talk to him.”

“They’ve got a lot of good pieces there now but one thing they said they need now is a scoring wing. That’s what I bring to the table and that’s probably the most notable thing about my game. The fact that it’s a need for them gives me a good opportunity for me to come in and be that.”

Nickel hit the nail on the head when he said that the Tar Heels needed a scoring wing. We still don’t know how Justin McKoy and Dontrez Styles will work out, so there is plenty of room on the team for someone like Nickel, who is known to be a potent scorer. He finished his junior season at East Rockingham averaging 35 points, five assists, and 11 rebounds per game. Earning a commitment from him would give Hubert Davis quite the 2022 recruiting class, and depending on how things work out for players like Armando Bacon, Caleb Love, and maybe even Dawson Garcia, it’s quite possible that he wouldn’t be done from there.

As of right now, UNC has the second-best recruiting class in the country. Davis still has a number of four and five-star prospects left on his recruiting board, with the most notable one being Jaden Bradley should Caleb Love head for the pros. It will be interesting to see which recruits will wait and see what this new version of the Tar Heels looks like and how many will make their decisions based off of existing information. Either way, right now things are looking pretty rosy for Carolina basketball.