Mike Malone has only had the job for a few days, but so far, he seems to be doing reasonably well.
The smartest thing he’s done has been to hire experienced college personnel. Malone was by all accounts a superior NBA coach, but there are real differences between the two levels of the sport. He wouldn’t be the first guy to go from the NBA to college, only to fail.
He has lured Chuck Martin, a key assistant at Arkansas, and Kim English, who was until recently the head coach at Providence, to help in Chapel
Hill.
Martin is an outstanding recruiter who helped Calipari build great classes at Kentucky and then Arkansas. He and English will give him two guys who can advise him on the finer points of college basketball.
He also retained Hubert Davis assistants Sean May, Pat Sullivan, and staffer Eric Hoots.
UNC has lost seven players to the portal. James Brown didn’t really play much. We saw at least one post where a UNC fan expressed relief that Zayden High was gone, presumably relating to his suspension last season after allegedly filming a sexual encounter with a fellow student without her permission.
Isaiah Denis played sparingly, but Luka Bogavic and Derek Dixon were useful. Kyan Evans was one of those guys who tended to get lost in the Hubert Shuffle, as was Jonathan Powell.
So far, it looks like he will retain Henri Veesaar, Jaydon Young, Karin Stevenson, and some rando human victory cigars you’ll hopefully never notice.
Malone also got former Virginia Tech wing Neoklis Avdalas. He dealt with injuries last season, which slowed him down, but that guy is a baller. If he’s healthy, Malone could conceivably run Avdalas at point guard, or at least offload some responsibilities to him in the half court.
He also retained Davis recruits Maximo Adams and Malloy Smith, son of Kenny “the Jet” Smith. However, UNC cut ties with Dylan Mingo, who apparently was injured this spring and might have had to redshirt if the Heels hadn’t cut him loose.
Clearly, Malone still needs more talent, but the portal makes that relatively easy. And we don’t know if he has a GM in place or in mind, but basically, what he’s done so far seems smart. At a minimum, things seem more coherent than they did under Davis.
Speaking of Davis, previous transfers have done very well, not least of all Final Four MOP Elliot Cadeau, who just helped Michigan to the national championship. It’ll be interesting to see how the guys who left do at their new schools.
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