When the Mike Malone era of North Carolina basketball begins he's going to find the locker room a lot emptier than Hubert Davis left it.
According to ESPN college basketball insider Jeff Borzello, a total of seven North Carolina players have either formally entered the transfer portal or announced intentions to transfer today.
The seven consist of Derek Dixon, Jonathan Powell, Kyan Evans, Zayden High, Isaiah Denis, Jaydon Young and James Brown. The seven combined to average a little over 20 points per game.
A loss, or addition by subtraction?
While the number may sound high, basketball fans quickly dismissed the idea that their departure will be any notable loss for the Tar Heels other than Dixon. And as far as Dixon goes, fans are mixed at best:
"Dixon is the only real big loss here but with Mingo coming in he wasn’t going to start over him anyways," one user remarked.
"None of which will be missed besides Dixon but he's replaceable," wrote another.
"All were very average players on an average team. Sloppy," a third wrote.
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There might be some truth to the notion that those seven can be easily replaced. The star recruit of the 2026 class is Dylan Mingo, who projects to be a Day 1 starter as a freshman. They've also signed another top-25 recruit in Maximo Adams to play small forward.
Malone won't have an easy task in getting North Carolina back into national title contention. He's already drawing unfavorable comparisons to Bill Belichick and it's clear that there's a powerful pecking order in the college basketball coaching ranks that will be hard to crack.
But North Carolina needed to make a splash and Malone has the potential to be just that as a recruiter.
