Maybe it was J. Cole, the platinum-certified rapper and lifelong basketball lover from Fayetteville, working up a sweat as he took jump shots in a corner goal at the Smith Center.
Maybe it was Kendall Marshall, the former North Carolina point guard, who was announced Wednesday afternoon as the team’s new director of recruiting with a “developing role” focused primarily around social media.
Or maybe it was the reversal of a longtime policy, dating back to Dean Smith’s early UNC tenure, that made first-year players unavailable for interviews with independent media before they played in a regular-season game.
On the heels of last week’s Late Night with Roy event, which featured the head coach himself Electric Sliding in a pink blazer and Air Jordans with a slew of five-star recruits in the audience, something subtly different was in the air at the 2019 UNC men’s basketball media day.
Intentional or not, it was fitting for program that lost six players last season, including its top five scorers and brought in six new ones — most notably, highly touted first-years Cole Anthony and Armando Bacot and graduate transfers Christian Keeling and Justin Pierce.
“Every year, the team dynamic always changes a little bit,” junior forward Sterling Manley told The Daily Tar Heel. “People have personalities. It’s a good thing — it’s always good to have change.”
In a wide-ranging press conference, Roy Williams said he can’t remember ever having a deliberate conversation with one of his teams about welcoming in newcomers.This year was no different. Summer workouts help, he said, as do the famed pickup games that pit former UNC players against the current roster.
Williams also credited senior Brandon Robinson and junior Garrison Brooks, the roster’s de facto leaders, in terms of experience and playing time, for incorporating their new teammates, which also include first-year guards Anthony Harris and Jeremiah Francis. Not like it’s been a struggle.
