UNC Recruiting Week of 4/18: Five-star 2023 target G.G. Jackson could announce his decision ‘sooner than later’

Welcome to this week’s recruiting update! It has been a wild couple of months for UNC basketball, which led to us putting our recruiting news on the back burner for a bit. Thankfully we now have time to bring all of you as much recruiting info as we can, as both the football and basketball programs try to build their future rosters.

On the football side of things, news has been pretty quiet for Mack Brown and his staff. There’s a very odd thing happening with 2023 recruiting right now, which we will get into in just a moment. On the basketball side of things, we have been anticipating an announcement from five-star recruit G.G. Jackson for a few weeks now, but things have been delayed considerably. Let’s go ahead and jump into football news, and we will circle back around to Jackson in a bit.

Football

• Greensboro product and three-star defensive product Jamaal Jarrett has been sought after by UNC for quite some time now. They offered him a scholarship in March of 2021, and since then he has had a number of other suitors knocking on his door as well. Over a year later, Jarrett has managed to cut his list down to five schools.

Jarrett announced that he will pick from the following schools: UNC, Clemson, Georgia, LSU, and Auburn. Here is what he told Rivals about the Heels making the cut:

“I just love how they were my first offer and my first school to ever give me an opportunity to further my academic and athletic career,” said Jarrett. “I’ve always loved being on campus over there. The recruiting coordinators and coaches, we all have a great bond. Of course, Mack Brown is a legendary Hall of Fame coach and has a lot of tricks up his sleeve. UNC is going to shock the world. I really think UNC is going to do really good with Mack Brown before he leaves.

“Travis (Shaw) being over there is pretty big for me,” he said. “Seeing him and his process and how he took his process slow and how he developed as a player at Grimsley and being that in-state role model, it’s a lot. I could see myself doing that.”

As of right now, Georgia seems to be the school to beat to earn Jarrett’s commitment. They have had a fair amount of success recruiting in the state of North Carolina, so we will have to wait and see if Mack Brown can change things before Jarrett makes his decision.

• Speaking of making decisions, let’s discuss why recruitment in 2023 is looking really thin. Tar Heel Illustrated wrote a piece about the current state of Power Five conference recruiting, and how very few programs have managed to land 10+ commitments to this point. As of right now, UNC is one of nine power five programs that have just one commit, and their one commit is four-star quarterback Tad Hudson. THI got to speak with Mack Brown and he gave an explanation as to what he felt like the issue was:

“I think in studying it’s slower across the country and people are wanting since COVID is out of the way, they’re actually getting to go take unofficial visits. And it seems like everybody wants to take an unofficial visit then they want to take an official visit before they make their decision. I think a lot of people will be making decisions in May and June.”

If Brown is correct, then we should see recruiting gain some steam starting next month. As of right now, the Heels have made 93 scholarship offers in the 2023 class, We will have to wait and see how many of them decide to commit to UNC over the next few months, and how many of them choose to go elsewhere.

Basketball

The player that I have had my eye on the most in the 2023 class is five-star power forward G.G. Jackson. The 6’9 Columbia, SC native was to allegedly announce his recruitment a couple of weeks ago, but it has been crickets to this point. What happened instead is that Jackson picked up a new scholarship offer from UMass, despite his decision allegedly coming down to UNC and South Carolina.

Multiple reports have pointed to UNC being the favorite to land Jackson, which makes it a bit puzzling that we haven’t heard anything. The word is that Jackson could commit any day now, so it seems like the waiting game will have to continue a bit longer. As of right now, Jackson is ranked as the best player in the 2023 class according to Rivals, and is the sixth-best player according to 247Sports. Landing him would almost certainly give UNC a top-three class for the time being, if not the overall best. I wouldn’t stray too far away from your tech devices, because all signs point to this announcement being delivered out of the blue.