{"id":511183,"date":"2026-01-02T05:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T05:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/511183\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T05:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T05:19:11","slug":"luke-loucks-leaves-chapel-hill-with-high-praise-for-caleb-wilson-tar-heels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/511183\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Loucks Leaves Chapel Hill With High Praise For Caleb Wilson, Tar Heels"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. \u2014 In his first visit as coach to North Carolina, Florida State coach Luke Loucks left with high praise for this year\u2019s UNC squad.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Hubert has done an incredible job assembling a really good team, and we\u2019ve played against some good teams so far,\u201d Loucks said after UNC\u2019s 79-66 win over his Seminoles on Tuesday night at the Smith Center.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Tar Heels extended their winning streak over FSU to seven games, while playing an FSU team for the first time since 2002 that was not coached by Leonard Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Upon Hamilton\u2019s retirement at the end of last season, FSU handed the reins over to Loucks, a four-year letterman for the Seminoles basketball team from 2008-12. Loucks returned to his alma mater after spending nine seasons on NBA coaching staffs with the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings. Loucks was on staff for the Warriors back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ACC-opener was FSU\u2019s fourth game against a top-25 ranked team in the KenPom after already suffering losses to Houston (No. 12), Florida (No. 13), and Georgia (No. 25).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a team that\u2019s, to me, as good as any of those teams,\u201d Loucks said of the Tar Heels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just like many of the opposing coaches to come through the Smith Center press room before him, Loucks had rave reviews for Caleb Wilson<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After trailing for the majority of the game\u2019s first seven minutes, the star freshman pulled the Tar Heels into the fight, muscling home an and-one layup at the 13:06 mark that kick-started the North Carolina offense. The projected lottery pick recorded a near double-double in the first half alone, entering the halftime locker room with 14 points to go along with nine rebounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m coming down from the NBA and that is a bona fide, bona fide NBA player,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cHe has size, length, athleticism, so kudos to Hubert and his staff for bringing a guy like Caleb in \u2014 that\u2019s your prototypical UNC pro that\u2019s going to go make a ton of money playing basketball and he\u2019s going to help win a lot of games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s win appears to be little more than an appetizer as North Carolina enters a much-improved ACC slate, though it remains to be seen how this Florida State team compares to the league\u2019s squads from a season ago.<\/p>\n

Regardless, through 14 games, it appears that this year\u2019s North Carolina squad will be well-equipped to handle the stiffened conference slate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I like their team, too,\u201d Loucks said. \u201cI like the big kid, Henri (Veesaar). He does a great job around the rim, and then their guard play, obviously, is just steady.\u00a0 Seth (Trimble), obviously, is still shaking off some of the rust from coming back from injury, but he was such a force defensively and getting into the paint and getting to the foul line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAPEL HILL, N.C. \u2014 In his first visit as coach to North Carolina, Florida State coach Luke Loucks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,5391],"class_list":{"0":"post-511183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-caleb-wilson-25-holy-innocents-episcopal-school"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115823821767684657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}