North Carolina UNC Tar Heels basketball Hubert Davis ACC Cormac Ryan Jae'lyn Withers

CHAPEL HILL – One of the interesting aspects to the transfer portal era in which athletes are eligible to play the following season at their new schools, and can bounce around within the same conference, is that coaches often find themselves with players on their roster for whom they previously game-planned.

In the case of North Carolina Basketball Coach Hubert Davis, three of the newest Tar Heels on his roster have faced UNC at some point over the past several seasons, so Davis has scouted and prepared plans for them in an effort to minimize their effectiveness and earn victories.

He now has Cormac Ryan, Jae’lyn Withers, and Paxson Wojcik on his roster, and doesn’t have to worry about finding ways to deal with their abilities.

Davis said recently during his annual summer press conference he isn't surprised by what he's seen from the trio in the allotted July practices. They are who he thought they were.

“I like what’s in their bag from a basketball standpoint," he said.

Yet, opposing coaches can only have so much of a handle on players they scout as opponents. Davis knew all along Ryan could shoot and make big plays when at Notre Dame because he’d seen it before. He knew Withers was sneaky good and highly athletic at Louisville. And he saw Wojcik score 14 points with six rebounds and three assists for Brown in a narrow UNC win two seasons ago.

Davis says he “loves” their personalities, says each brings plenty of intangibles to the floor, and obviously plenty of experience having combined to play 7,294 minutes in 296 college games.

“All of these guys have been leaders and bring tremendous experience to the team,” Davis said, recognizing that each were team captains a year ago. “So, having that experience and knowledge coming in from different places is such a huge benefit.”

UNC has also brought in former Stanford forward Harrison Ingram, whom UNC nearly landed out of high school, and former West Virginia forward James Okonkwo, who hasn’t made it to Chapel Hill yet, as he’s been in Europe representing Great Britain in the U20 FIBA.

In all, teams Davis has been associated with have faced Ryan, Withers, and Wijcik a total of 11 times. Davis knows Ryan’s and Withers’ games the most, however, and went into detail describing what the add to the Tar Heels.

First, the 6-foot-5 Ryan:

“When you’re talking about Cormac, his ability to shoot the basketball, be able to score. He’s also a playmaker; a guy that can make plays off the bounce. He’s a basketball player…

“He’s an incredible defender; a guy that competes on the defensive end. And probably the biggest area that I did know, and probably shouldn’t know because I wasn’t his coach, is what kind of leader he is.

“He’s a gatherer. He’s a vocal leader in the locker room, on the court, and just brings teammates together. With him this being this last year in college, there’s a sense of urgency in him for this thing to work out. It’s just been great being around him and coaching him this summer.”

Then the 6-foot-9 Withers:

“Jae’lyn Withers is somebody that I liked coming out of high school. I’ve always been a big fan of his. One of the things, and you can ask the assistant coaches, every time we played Louisville, the one person I was worried about was him because of his size and his athleticism…

“He can score inside, he can run the floor, can rebound, he can shoot the ball from three; he shot 40 percent (41.7) from three last year. Defensively, he can guard one through five…

“I think it was two years ago, my first year as head coach, we were at Louisville, RJ had a wide open layup to score to win the game, and I don’t know where he came from, but he blocked the shot and it went into overtime…

“Just having him around and his personality, he’s such a team guy, always laughing, always wanting to have fun.”

Davis is impressed with Wojcik, too, saying, “I’ve been blown away by Paxson. His ability to gather teammates and bring guys together has been unbelievable.”

As for Ingram, who is 6-foot-7 and a former top-10 prospect from Texas, Carolina’s coach gushed:

“I love having multiple playmakers. I love having multiple guys out there on the floor that can make plays, that can make plays for themselves and facilitate for their teammates, and Harrison can definitely do that. He has tremendous size, versatility, he can play a number of different positions.

“He can handle the ball, he can pass, he can shoot, he can post up, he’s really physical and can defend whether it’s in the post or out on the perimeter. It’s nice to have somebody with that type of size and skill level and athleticism that can do a number of things out there on the floor.”

Now, Davis wasn’t allowed to speak about Okonkwo, the 6-foot-9 forward who averaged 11 minutes a game last season for the Mountaineers, because he hadn’t filled out the necessary paper work to enroll at UNC by the time Davis held his presser.

Outside of Okonkwo, Davis knew plenty about the abilities of his other four transfers, in particular the three whom he’d game-planned four. That accelerated his process in recognizing what he had on the roster, which then sped up the Heels’ fusion process.

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