Today as we continue on with our North Carolina men’s basketball season recap series, we’ve come to the post awarding our Freshman of the Year for this year’s team.
Folks, to be honest, it did not take much deep diving or numbers crunching to figure out who won this particular honor. Considering that he was the best player on the team overall, you can really only give it to Caleb Wilson.
Before injuries cruelly robbed us of seeing him in the the ACC and NCAA Tournaments, Wilson was putting up one of the best
seasons in the country of anyone. He finished his season averaging 19.8 points — on a .578 field goal percentage — and 9.4 rebounds per game. For his year, he was voted a second team All-American by several different outlets.
By pretty much every recruiting outlet out there, Wilson was considered a top ten prospect in this freshman class, and a top five player by several of them. He very quickly showed why. In his second game as a Tar Heel, Wilson dropped 24 points on 9-of-11 shooting as UNC beat Kansas in a marquee matchup against fellow freshman star Darryn Peterson. For the season, Wilson put up 11 double doubles, the wildest of which came when he put up 22 and 16 in UNC’s win over Florida State.
After a 23-point effort in the Tar Heels’ buzzer-beating win over Duke, Wilson suffered a broken hand in the next game against Miami. He seemed to be nearing a comeback later in the season or for the ACC and NCAA Tournaments when he suffered another injury in practice. The setback did end up costing him his season, leading to him missing the second Duke game and both of UNC’s losses in the respective tournaments. As good as Wilson was and is, it’s difficult to imagine that him healthy would’ve turned the Tar Heels into a national championship contender or anything. However, they also might not have immediately crashed out of both tournaments, and who knows the butterfly effect that might’ve had on UNC and Hubert Davis’ current predicament.
The only other freshman you can even remotely consider is Derek Dixon. He certainly played had his games, and even hit a game winner against Kentucky. If you were being charitable, you could maybe say that since Wilson is picking up all these other honors, that maybe you could give Dixon Freshman of the Year, but Wilson was just too good to do that.
The expectation is that now Wilson is off to the NBA. Considering that he’s expected to be a top five-ish pick is what’s considered the deepest draft in a while, that’s not surprising. Even if he never wears a Carolina uniform in game action again, he’s been a delight to root for, both as a player and a person.
