So I was perusing various articles about this year’s UNC Baseball team amidst their attempt to return to Omaha and maybe bring the program its first ever championship, and in one of the comment sections, a question caught my eye: somebody asking how UNC fans could be sure they’d still get to watch freshman wunderkind Caden Glauber for the next two seasons, given that we’re in the age of the transfer portal and NIL and that there are doubtlessly SEC schools whose financial incentives UNC wouldn’t
be able to match.
And that reminded me that under Scott Forbes, even in the past couple of years, retention has been a particular strength of the Diamond Heels. Forbes, the past 3 years and I think before that as well, has not lost a single regular gameday contributor to the portal. Committed fans might recognize names like Cale Bolton, Maccadin Dye, Eric Grintz, and Reece Holbrook, who all contributed at least once to the team off the bench, but it was not a surprise that they and others transferred to programs with more available playing time. Budding or existing stars, though, have stuck around. I don’t know how much they might have been tempted by other programs, but the amount probably isn’t zero, but between an ability to at least compete financially and the locker room and program culture that Forbes has built, he has retained high-end homegrown talent year after year. And I suppose that’s as good an answer to that particular question about Glauber as any — you can never be sure, but Forbes has a pretty good track record of keeping guys, even those who look like future first-round MLB Draft picks, in Chapel Hill.
And that made me think about this question: who is the transfer portal entrant from a UNC sport, particularly in the contemporary era, that has most surprised you? As much as a bunch of fans like to claim they can’t be surprised by anything anymore and that they’re fully convinced all college athletes are ruthless mercenaries who don’t know what a team is and form zero attachments to the people and environments around them, that’s very obviously copium. It takes just one listen to a locker room interview to disabuse one of that notion, if one cares to be so disabused and frequently even if they don’t. And thus — has there been a portal entrant that made you question what you thought you knew about their relationship with UNC and/or their coach? Or about the program itself?
For me, it’s got to be women’s basketball player Lanie Grant, who entered the transfer portal on April 1st of this year after two years at UNC that appeared to be building up to real stardom. She’ll be suiting up for TCU this year. Grant committed to UNC as a freshman in high school, then skipped her senior year of high school to come to UNC early, and was one of the faces of the team from the moment she got on campus even though she was a freshman on a team with multi-year senior leaders like Alyssa Ustby, Lexi Donarski, and Maria Gakdeng. She was a key bench player as a freshman and a half-time starter as a sophomore, leading the team in three-point shooting, and it looked like she was going to be a vocal leader for the team from the perimeter as an upperclassman — and then poof. That’s underscored by the fact that until this year, Courtney Banghart, like Forbes, had been pretty good at retaining the talent she wanted to. She had a couple of losses, but entering this year, players like Laila Hull and Ciera Toomey were more common — could easily have transferred ahead of this season given their lack of usage, but didn’t. Grant’s departure, as well as that of Taliyah Henderson, does change my image of the program a little, because I didn’t think it was possible before.
I’d love to see y’all’s thoughts in the comments — and like I said, I’d appreciate if complaints about how little college athletes care about anything were reserved for other comment sections.
