UNC Recruiting Week of 1/17: Four-star DL Monteque Rhames includes the Heels in his top ten

Welcome to this week’s recruiting update! Things have been pretty quiet in the world of recruiting, but two recruits made significant announcements over the last seven days. As far as basketball recruiting goes, things have been extremely quiet aside from some standout performances from some of Hubert Davis’ commits. So without further ado, let’s jump into some news.

Football

• Let’s start with some good news: on Tuesday, four-star 2023 defensive lineman Monteque Rhames II announced the top ten programs that he will focus on, and the Tar Heels made the cut.

UNC joins fellow ACC schools Louisville, NC State, and Virginia Tech on Rhames’ list, and is also joined by South Carolina, Michigan, UCF, West Virginia, Michigan State, and Coastal Carolina.

Rhames is a 6’6, 240-lb defensive lineman out of Sumter, SC. He currently plays for Sumter High School, and is the 39th-best defensive lineman in the 2023 class according to the 247Sports Composite rankings. Schools that failed to make his trimmed down list include App State, Charlotte, Louisiana-Monroe, and Charlotte.

• Now for the bad news: four-star 2023 defensive lineman Keith Sampson Jr. announced his top five list, and UNC was left off of the list. His final five teams are Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, South Carolina, and NC State.

The most notable tidbit about Sampson leaving UNC off of the list is the fact that he is an in-state product, hailing from New Bern, NC. Mack Brown has done an excellent job of recruiting within the North Carolina / Virginia footprint, but in this case he swung and missed. For those wondering how Sampson and Rhames stack up against each other, Sampson is ranked 30th in the country at the defensive lineman spot, which is eight spots higher than Rhames. It’s a very grand opening/grand closing situation, but ultimately it’s still really early in the recruiting process for this class. Brown’s recruiting list features six other defensive linemen that are ranked in the top 50 at that particular position, so we’ll see how things play out by the time this fall rolls around.

Basketball

• Four-star 2022 point guard Seth Trimble has been having a very good season, and it only got better this week. Last Friday, he finished with 27 points off 9-12 shooting agains Wawautosa East, and also recorded five rebounds, three assists, three steals, and a block. Right now Trimble is averaging 24.8 points per game and 3.6 assists, and his performance Friday was the fifth game in a row in which he scored 20+ points.

While there are three other really talented recruits coming to Chapel Hill in November, Trimble may be one of the more interesting recruits because of the situation that he will be coming into. The sixth-best point guard in the country could be coming in to take Caleb Love’s spot on the team depending on whether or not the sophomore decides to go pro. If he decides to stay, Trimble will add even more depth to the backcourt, but whether or not he would see much time is anybody’s guess thanks to how Hubert Davis has been using Dontrez Styles and D’Marco Dunn. Should Love declare for the NBA Draft, however, Trimble will have to get plugged in right away, which could be really good or a bit nerve-wracking depending on what side of the freshman point guard fence you are on. Either way, at some point Trimble will be an impact player for the Tar Heels, and hopefully it will be sooner than later.