wouldn't have swept with zion, js.

Hey they played him for a whole few minutes lol I can only imagine they were losing for that time

got me there

Apparently it takes the "#1 player in the country" to beat our Heels by 1!

RIP season but at least Dook lost too

#1

UNC's Little falls to Trail Blazers with No. 25 pick


The Portland Trail Blazers selected North Carolina forward Nassir Little with the 25th pick in the NBA draft on Thursday night.

Little, a 6-foot-7 wing, was one of the final players left in the green room in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday night, but he eventually found his way to a playoff team. ESPN's Jonathan Givony had him going as the No. 11 pick in his final mock draft.

"Man I think it's a blessing in disguise," Little said. "Slipping down to 25 initially I was kind of confused. But when I looked at the roster and remember how they played in the playoffs, I thought it was a great fit for me."


Little was also surprised the Blazers targeted him, as he never came to Portland for a workout nor did he interview with the team at the NBA combine.

"I was expecting to go in the lottery," Little said. "I was surprised the Blazers drafted me because I didn't really have a lot of conversations with them. I didn't work out with them. I didn't know they had much interest in me. I didn't work out with them even at the combine. I'm just happy they saw something in me that I didn't see."

Little prides himself on carving his own path, and while he was admittedly anxious after falling out of the lottery, the moniker of Trail Blazer fits for a player who refused to play on the Nike AAU circuit and chose to go to boarding schools away from his family for his final two years of high school.

"I've always done things a little bit differently," Little said. "I didn't play on the Nike circuit. That was big. Boarding schools. I always carved my own path and paved my own way."

By having teams pass on him with the first 24 picks of the draft, it was reminiscent of his path to the NBA.

"I mean, somebody told me the only way I could be successful in my life was if I was a top player on the Nike circuit," Little said. "But I wanted to show people I could be a top player no matter where I played at."


Little averaged 9.8 points and 4.6 rebounds in his lone season at North Carolina. He also took home the MVP trophy at the 2018 McDonald's All American Game. He said he was excited to team up with second-year Blazers guard Anfernee Simons, who also is from Orlando, Florida.

"We just played pick up, I want to say a week or two ago," Little said. "So it's going to be crazy that we're playing on the same team. We played against each other in high school a little over two years ago. I'm extremely excited."

The Blazers have two forwards hitting free agency this summer: Al-Farouq Aminu (unrestricted) and Jake Layman (restricted).

The Blazers are fresh off their first Western Conference finals appearance in 19 years.

This post was edited by judson04 on Jul 1 2019 07:14am

Posted On: August 5, 2019
By Adam Lucas

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Vanderbilt's April selection of Jerry Stackhouse as the program's new head coach was greeted with some surprise in the college basketball world. The former Tar Heel great had a successful head coaching stint with Toronto's NBA G League affiliate, winning a title and Coach of the Year honors during his two-year career there, but had never been a head coach or assistant coach in college.

But when Stackhouse sits behind his desk in Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym one summer morning and explains the path that led him to Nashville, it makes perfect sense. And not surprisingly, there is a Carolina connection.

The athletic director who hired Stackhouse at Vanderbilt is Malcolm Turner, himself relatively new to the job after being named to the post in December of 2018. Turner is the former president of the G League, but he has another, less-well known credential: he's a Tar Heel and a Morehead Scholar.

"Malcolm was at Carolina before me, but we had mutual friends who connected us through Carolina," Stackhouse says. "As Malcolm and I were ascending in the NBA, me on the playing side and him on the front office side, we were cordial. And once we both went to the G League, we were in quite a few meetings together as far as collective bargaining and how to grow the league and things like that. We became closer and he was able to observe me and how I approached building a team and running an organization. For the most part it was respect for each other's work. But it didn't hurt that we had some Carolina ties."

Those ties include Stackhouse's two years playing for Dean Smith, including an ACC Tournament championship in 1994 (when Stackhouse won the event's MVP award) and a Final Four appearance in 1995.

As a Tar Heel, Stackhouse was known for two things: the athleticism that was best portrayed by his incredible reverse dunk at Cameron Indoor Stadium in 1995 (he had an equally impressive, though less-recognized, jam against then-nonconference foe Virginia Tech at the Greensboro Coliseum) and his home-grown, Kinston brand of toughness. But nearly 25 (!) years later, he knows his Carolina career was also an opportunity to learn firsthand from Smith the intricacies of not just coaching a team, but leading a program.

"A program is about people and understanding their issues and what they want," Stackhouse says. "We're dealing with people's kids they've had in their house, and we're asking them to put us in charge of that gap between leaving their house and going into the real world."

Dealing with people is one of the primary areas where Stackhouse learned valuable lessons during his tenure with Toronto, which included coaching national champion Kennedy Meeks during the 2017-18 season. Because of his competitiveness, Stackhouse's first inclination was to win every game. Through a series of meetings with respected Toronto president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri, he began to broaden his view and understand the role the G League team had in the entire organization.

But make no mistake: he still wanted to win. And like any coach, Stackhouse has a certain way he believes basketball should be played. He honed those principles during his NBA playing career, then during an extensive coaching career in grassroots basketball, and finally during his pro coaching experience. Now he's ready to pass on those lessons to a team that finished a disappointing 0-18 in the SEC last year but now gets a fresh start under an energetic new coach.

"I'm a loyalist," Stackhouse says. "If I see any inch of being disloyal, I'm ready to end it right there. We talked a lot about how to massage relationships, and the fact that you can't just fire everybody. In a college environment, you want everyone to have opinions. But I've already done a lot of the work in determining how we're going to play basketball. I would rather spend more time with you telling me ideas on how I can teach it than telling me ideas about how we should play it."

Spoken like a true head coach. But Stackhouse isn't quite ready to let his players forget that he's still a very accomplished player. Although he says his full-court days are mostly over and describes himself as a "half court assassin," he's spent much of his practice time with the Commodores this summer getting out on the court and actively participating in the NCAA-allowed workouts.

"I understand there will be a learning curve," Stackhouse says. "We have limited time in the summer, and they retain it for a couple days and then come back the next week and they don't have it anymore. Those are the highs and lows of building a team. But this summer our guys are enjoying the competitiveness of it and that's what we have to do to get to the next level. We have to compete. I'm excited about having so much more time to prepare a team than I'm used to. In the past, I've prepared 15 guys in the G League to play a game in two weeks. We've got much longer than that before the season starts here, and once the season comes, I hope to see some real growth start with this group."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The North Carolina Tar Heels will be without three players to start the season -- freshman guards Anthony Harris and Jeremiah Francis and junior forward Sterling Manley, all of whom are battling knee injuries.

Coach Roy Williams put no timetable on their returns.

North Carolina still has one of the top recruits in the country, freshman Cole Anthony, but injuries have left the Tar Heels thin at the guard position. Along with Harris and Francis being out, Leaky Black and Andrew Platek have also been battling through minor injuries, forcing Williams to bring up a player from the junior varsity team for practice.

"The day before practice started, I didn't even know the guy's name," Williams joked.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Cole Anthony keeps scoring at a rate never before seen by a North Carolina freshman.

As for the rest of the offense, well, the sixth-ranked Tar Heels are working on that part.

Anthony scored 28 points to help UNC beat Gardner-Webb 77-61 on Friday night, though the game again offered uncertainty when it comes to who is capable of consistently stepping into the role of Anthony's wingman.

"You're not going to know who's going to come get you 15 or 20 points that game," Anthony said. "Honestly I like it like that."

Anthony, who had 34 points in the season-opening win against Notre Dame for an Atlantic Coast Conference record for a freshman debut, now has 82 points through his first three games -- blowing past Rashad McCants' previous mark by 19 points.

He's also the first UNC freshman to score at least 20 points in each of those first three games.

On this night, the No. 2 producer was fellow freshman Armando Bacot inside with his first double-double (12 points and 11 rebounds). No other player scored in double figures and UNC (3-0) has had just two other players (Garrison Brooks and graduate transfer Justin Pierce) to score at least 10 in a game so far.

Still, Pierce pointed to balance that included season highs of nine points for fellow graduate transfer Christian Keeling and Andrew Platek, along with eight for himself.

"We're a talented group and I don't think there's going to be a clear-cut No. 2 option, No. 3 option, No. 4 option, just because of the way each game flows," Pierce said.

Jose Perez scored 12 points for Gardner-Webb (0-3), which shot 37% and made 5 of 23 3-pointers.

"I thought our mindset and our fight and our will to do the things we needed to defensively was there tonight, and that was great for us against a good team on the road," Gardner-Webb coach Tim Craft said. "We just offensively struggled."

BIG PICTURE

Gardner-Webb: The Runnin' Bulldogs tenaciously hung in this one, staying within four points through the first half and then responding to the Tar Heels' halftime-spanning run by getting to the foul line to keep the game from getting away. The problem is their own offensive troubles from the first two games (40.3% shooting) followed them to Chapel Hill and showed up when they were flirting with putting some pressure on the Tar Heels.

"We fought back," Craft said. "Man, we had chances late. If we could've just got a shot or two to go down."

UNC: The Tar Heels were coming out of a weeklong break since winning at UNC Wilmington in a game that left coach Roy Williams to lament: "We're not a very good basketball team if we've only got three guys that can make a shot." Things weren't significantly better for stretches of Friday night, either, though they shot 50% after halftime to build a double-digit lead after leading just 30-27 at the break. The good news is help could come soon in the form of senior Brandon Robinson, who got in some warmup work as he nears his debut from a preseason ankle injury.

ROOKIE MISTAKES

The 6-foot-10 Bacot made 6 of 9 shots but also had three turnovers. He had the ball stripped away multiple times inside when he brought it down toward his waist with shorter defenders lurking to Williams' chagrin.

"It was just more like a way to power it up, kind of load up," Bacot said. "But against those type of teams, I don't really need to do that. I can just keep the ball high and finish it."

MORE ON ANTHONY

Anthony hit a huge 3-pointer over Nate Johnson to beat the shot clock at the 5:48 mark to put UNC up 10, one of several sequences that helped the Tar Heels keep the Runnin' Bulldogs at arm's distance. He also made 11 of 13 free throws.

But he had just one rebound after becoming the only freshman in program history to go for at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in consecutive games.

UP NEXT

Gardner-Webb: The Runnin' Bulldogs visit Wichita State on Tuesday.

UNC: The Tar Heels host Elon on Wednesday.


https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/recap?gameId=401168185