UNC Basketball 2002 Recruiting Class
UNC Basketball 2002 Recruiting Class
- Ramond Felton (#3 RSCI)
- Rashad McCants (#4 RSCI)
- Sean May (#9 RSCI)
- David Noel (NR)
- Byron Sanders (NR)
- Damien Grant (NR)
Reflections on the 2002 Class
By Gutty
The 2002 recruiting class has to be one of the most bi-polar groups of recruits ever constructed at UNC. On one side, you have 3 top 10 recruits in Felton, McCants, and May. On the other side, you have 3 very low rated recruits in Noel, Sanders, and Grant compiled desperately to add bulk to the 2002-2003 post rotation.
My fondest memories of learning about this group of players:
- Watching some ridiculous Raymond Felton crossover highlight videos on UNCBasketball.com in a moment in time when such footage wasn’t really that common. The video was always very slow loading for me on the ancient Internet connections of the day, but the highlights were thrilling, especially considering that I had never seen the AAU circuit or understood how top 5 players like Felton dominate the competition.
- Going to the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions for the first time. Friday night, I saw Felton play for the first time live. The next day, watched him lead a scraggly Beach Ball Select (hey, at least they had Major Wingate) team to a victory over a stacked local lineup of Shavlick Randolph, JJ Reddick, Eric Williams, and other future ACC competition. It was enertaining to watch Raymond have to do it all and dribble through 3-4 defenders…a habit he never really kicked until he went to the league.
- The first time I visited an Internet site at a certain time and date for breaking info was to discover if Sean May was going to Indiana or UNC. What a big, lucky commit that was for UNC, although the team would have to play nearly the entire season without him.
I personally didn’t believe that McCants could shoot until he proved it in his first few games. It seemed like he was more of a physical PF type in AAU (like a Roger Powell from Illinois) and I never had faith that he really would be reliable in that area. He looked too muscular to have touch!
The David Noel commitment, while brilliant in retrospect, was also a kind of low point for the basketball program, in my opinion, because the basketball team had to take away from the football team just to survive, which isn’t at all fair to the football coach. Noel is an inspirational story after the fact, but this was a desperate move by Doherty.
Byron Sanders was a good pickup considering the situation, because he was actually on the fringes of the top 100 rankings. Doherty had to take whatever was left for PFs, and Sanders certainly ended up being crucial to that squad in his freshman year.
Damion Grant was more myth than man for a long time, because no one had any information on his playing style and you only knew that he was freaking big. The hope was that since he was a soccer player, then perhaps he would be quick for his size and could camp down low and produce somehow with rebounds and dunks and blocks.
The net that Doherty cast was wide as the sea that recruiting season. We tried with Carmelo Anthony; we went after Lenny Cooke; we chased Sheldon Williams; Torin Francis was too good for us; Shavlick Randolph wasn’t even swayed by MJ; we would have taken Mario Boggan. It was a period of time, extending into 2003, when rejection was more typical than good news. Felton, McCants, and May were considered to be the saviors to the program, somewhat similar to how Kentucky fans feel with the arrival of John Wall and Demarcus Cousins.