Star North Carolina freshman Caleb Wilson broke his right thumb dunking in practice Thursday and will undergo season-ending surgery, the university announced Friday.<\/p>\n
Wilson, the Tar Heels\u2019 leading scorer and rebounder, has missed UNC\u2019s last six games with a fractured left hand, which he sustained against Miami on Feb. 10.<\/p>\n
Head coach Hubert Davis told reporters Thursday \u2014 before the team practiced, and before Wilson suffered his season-ending injury \u2014 that the Atlanta native was progressing well in his rehab and nearing a return to the Tar Heels\u2019 lineup.<\/p>\n
Instead, Friday\u2019s news brings a devastating end to one of this season\u2019s best freshman campaigns \u2014 one that has all but guaranteed that the 6-foot-10 Wilson will become a top-five pick in this summer\u2019s NBA Draft. The five-star recruit has been UNC\u2019s best player all season, averaging 19.8 points, 9.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.4 blocks per game. Before fracturing his left hand, Wilson paced the nation in dunks while simultaneously leading North Carolina to marquee wins over Duke, Kansas and Kentucky.<\/p>\n
And while UNC has responded well in Wilson\u2019s absence, going 5-1 with wins over expected NCAA Tournament teams Louisville and Clemson, Davis\u2019 team now undoubtedly has a much lower ceiling entering the ACC tournament and March Madness.<\/p>\n
For Wilson, this latest injury ends a freshman season that has rewritten North Carolina\u2019s record books. Despite only playing 24 games, Wilson broke Tyler Hansbrough\u2019s longstanding program record for the most 20-point games by a freshman, with 17. His per-game scoring average is also the highest by a freshman in UNC history. And depending on how the Tar Heels\u2019 season ends, he may still wind up as the fourth freshman in program history to lead his team in rebounding.<\/p>\n
Wilson more than solidified his draft stock before these injuries, looking every bit like the sort of do-it-all forward NBA teams are desperate to find. The Athletic\u2019s draft expert, Sam Vecenie, had Wilson going fourth in his latest mock draft<\/a> published earlier this week. Assuming he heals in time for the predraft process, there\u2019s no reason to think Wilson will fall out of the top five.<\/p>\n If anything, he\u2019s North Carolina\u2019s best hope to produce an NBA All-Star since the tandem of Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison entered the league in 1998.<\/p>\n However, any future success that comes Wilson\u2019s way won\u2019t help the Tar Heels now, during the most pivotal stretch of their season. North Carolina\u2019s regular-season finale is Saturday at No. 1 Duke, in the rematch of this season\u2019s earlier classic in Chapel Hill, where senior UNC guard Seth Trimble hit a game-winning 3 in the final second<\/a>.<\/p>\n After that, the Tar Heels begin their postseason charge next Thursday in the ACC tournament as the league\u2019s No. 4 seed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Star North Carolina freshman Caleb Wilson broke his right thumb dunking in practice Thursday and will undergo season-ending…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,217,354,6,231,772,1544,1770],"class_list":{"0":"post-644110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-college-basketball","10":"tag-mens-college-basketball","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaab","15":"tag-north-carolina-tar-heels"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116184691909481451","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644110","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=644110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}