In the first Coaches Poll for the 2024 season, UNC Football was not ranked.
As you probably realized when you skimmed through the list, Mack Brown and the UNC football program are nowhere to be found, as they recieved a total of six votes from the 69 coaches that have a vote.
If you’re surprised by this… we’re hear to tell you that you shouldn’t be.
The UNC football program is no stranger to starting the season unranked in this poll, as they have been unranked in the preseason rankings in two of the last three seasons. North Carolina was unranked heading into the 2022 season, as the Tar Heels, fittingly, had a quarterback competition brewing between Drake Maye and Jacolby Criswell.
Additionally, this year’s team has quite a few question marks to address, as the quarterback is one of the biggest questions left to be answered. The Tar Heels are also hoping that new defensive coordinator Geoff Collins can help revamp a unit that has struggled mightily over the past few seasons.
Preseason rankings are essentially meaningless, as a lot can and will change throughout the college football season. It will be up to UNC football to prove that they are better than people are giving them credit for. They’ll look to prove the doubters wrong once they take the field for the first time on August 29 at Minnesota.
Incoming freshman and five-star forward Drake Powell was selected to participate in the 2024 Nike Skills Academy this week in Portland, Oregon. He was a participant in the event last summer, and this year he is the only Tar Heel to make the cut.
The NBA Skills Academy is a week-long event where players go through various workouts and drills, film sessions, and five-on-five play. Current and former NBA players attend the event to help train high school and college-level prospects, and there are a bunch of NBA scouts that show up to the event as well. Since there are only 15 men’s college players selected every year, Powell making the cut is a pretty big deal. It’s a great opportunity for him to show NBA scouts what he’s made of before suiting up in Carolina blue for the first time this November.
Drake Powell is a 6’6, 195-lb small forward from Pittsboro, NC. He finished his high school journey as the third-best small forward in the country, and the 11th-best player overall per the 247Sports Composite rankings. Powell was named McDonald’s All-American alongside fellow teammate, Ian Jackson. Fellow 2024 commit James Brown joined the trio to give UNC the fifth-best recruiting class, which is also the highest ranked recruiting class in the Hubert Davis era.
There has of course been a lot of buzz surrounding Jackson and the potential of him being a one-and-done prospect, but Powell has a decent shot of making his way to the league next year as well. He shot up the high school ranks last summer during AAU play, and he continued to prove just how talented he was during his final season at Norwood High School. One of the most enticing parts of his game is he is known to be a gifted defender, and was actually declared the best defender in the 2024 class according to 247Sports’ Travis Branham. There’s a lot to be excited about when it comes to Powell’s arrival to Chapel Hill, and I expect him to play a big role in the team’s quest to return to the Final Four.
