- Jeff Goodman & Jeff Brozello
Williams & Co. will enter this season as one of the top teams in the country, with a veteran-laden roster that includes just about everyone from last season's 26-win team that lost to Wisconsin in the Sweet 16. He's fortunate that everyone besides replaceable athletic wing J.P. Tokoto (think: Theo Pinson) returned to Chapel Hill. Talented big man Brice Johnson came back, and so did Marcus Paige, Kennedy Meeks and Justin Jackson. That quartet, along with guys like Isaiah Hicks, Nate Britt, Joel Berry II and Pinson, will give Williams a chance to get to the Final Four for the first time since 2009.
However, this could be the 64-year-old Williams' last shot at competing for a national title, depending on what happens with the ongoing academic fraud probe. The NCAA recently reopened an investigation that placed the school's football program on three years' probation in 2012 and banned the team from the 2012 postseason. The university found issues with 54 classes in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies (AFAM) taught from 2007 to 2011, including grade changes, forged faculty signatures and limited or no class time.
Wainstein found that more than 3,100 students -- 48 percent of them athletes -- took "paper classes" in the Afro-American studies department. The report, which exonerated Williams, was forwarded to the NCAA after it was completed in October 2014.
In the past, Williams and North Carolina could battle just about anyone for a potential recruit and come out on top, whether it was rival Duke and Mike Krzyzewski (i.e. Harrison Barnes), a West Coast power or Kentucky and Kansas. That's changed lately, as the Tar Heels have struggled to land program-changers.
They targeted Jaylen Brown (No. 4 in the ESPN 100), Brandon Ingram (No. 3), Stephen Zimmerman (No. 12), Ivan Rabb (No. 8) and Malik Newman (No. 10) in the Class of 2015. Williams and his staff came up empty, instead pulling a pair of fringe top 100 players: shooter Kenny Williams (No. 82), the one-time VCU signee who only wound up committing to the Tar Heels following Shaka Smart's departure to Texas; and Luke Maye (No. 95), whose other finalists were Clemson and Davidson.
"I can't answer that question for them," Ingram's father, Donald, told ESPN when asked how much the academic situation affected North Carolina's recruiting efforts. "If you look at who has signed, it appears that might have been a factor."
Brown opted to go across the country to California and play for Cuonzo Martin. Ingram, who hails from Kinston, N.C., and is coached in the summer by former Tar Heels star Jerry Stackhouse, chose Duke over North Carolina even though the Blue Devils have an abundance of wings and UNC was in desperate need of a shooter. Zimmerman, one of the top big men in the country, decided to stay home and play at UNLV. Rabb, who wound up staying close to home and signing with Cal, never seriously considered UNC -- and the same was true for Newman, who wound up deciding to play close to home at Mississippi State.
The Tar Heels will try again for the Class of 2016 with top-10 players such as Jayson Tatum, Harry Giles, Dennis Smith Jr., Malik Monk, Kobi Simmons and Edrice Adebayo.
But it won't be easy, depending on whether the NCAA hits the program with significant sanctions -- or if UNC remains in limbo when this group of incoming seniors is forced to make decisions.
Brandon Ingram, a 2015 prospect from Kinston, North Carolina, will stay in state, but he won't be playing at North Carolina. Kelly Kline/Under Armour
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http://espn.go.com/college-sports/r...ruits-hindered-ongoing-academic-investigation
