Mike Malone needs elite recruiter for North Carolina gamble to work

North Carolina basketball moved quickly on Monday, hiring a former NBA coach … but not Billy Donovan. The Tar Heels hired former Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone in a surprising off-the-radar move experts did not anticipate. Let’s talk about this huge development for UNC basketball, which occurred before the national championship game between UConn and Michigan.

Didn’t want to wait

The transfer portal opens this week. North Carolina very obviously did not want to wait for Billy Donovan to coach out the remainder of the NBA season with the Chicago Bulls and then pivot to UNC well after the opening of the portal. We can debate the value of the decision, but it’s clear that was the calculation North Carolina made.

Advertisement

So what about the portal?

Obviously, UNC basketball is banking on Mike Malone’s identity as an NBA championship coach to bring in transfers. However, it’s a cutthroat market. Dusty May of Michigan, Todd Golden of Florida, John Calipari of Arkansas, and other seasoned coaches are out there looking for their guys. The idea that Mike Malone will naturally attract the very best portal prospects is not a given.

Mike Malone needs an elite recruiter

Mike Malone needs proven high-end college assistants. He is a pro coach diving into the college game. He needs assistants who know the ins and outs of college basketball recruiting for this move to work.

Advertisement

Irony

An ironic element of all this is that Mike Malone needs someone like Tommy Lloyd as an assistant. Of course Lloyd would never be an assistant coach. He will never again be an assistant coach in basketball now that he has hit the big time at Arizona. Purely to illustrate the point, however, Lloyd became Mark Few’s ace recruiter at Gonzaga, which prepared him for the jump to Arizona head coach. That’s the kind of lieutenant Mike Malone needs at UNC basketball.

Brad Underwood

Brad Underwood of Illinois frankly would have made more sense as a head coaching hire than Mike Malone. Underwood doesn’t need to…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/mike-malone-needs-elite-recruiter-010003238.html

Author :

Publish date : 2026-04-07 01:00:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.