{"id":645214,"date":"2026-03-07T11:40:33","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T11:40:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/645214\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T11:40:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T11:40:33","slug":"north-carolina-star-caleb-wilson-out-for-season-after-breaking-right-thumb-while-dunking-in-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/645214\/","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina star Caleb Wilson out for season after breaking right thumb while dunking in practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

North Carolina star forward Caleb Wilson needs surgery and will miss the rest of the season after breaking his right thumb during a non-contact drill in practice Thursday, the program announced Friday<\/a>, specifying the freshman sustained the injury while dunking.<\/p>\n

Wilson, a top NBA Draft prospect, hadn’t played since Feb. 10, when he suffered a fracture in his left hand during the first half of a loss to Miami<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

He had missed the Tar Heels’ past six games in which UNC went 5-1 to improve to 24-6, including 12-5 in ACC play to clinch a double bye in the conference tournament.<\/p>\n

Now No. 17 in the country, UNC will face top-ranked and ACC regular-season champion Duke in a rematch of the rivals’ Feb. 7 thriller<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Seth Trimble hit the game-winner that night, Wilson scored 17 of the Tar Heels’ 29 first-half points. He’s also the team’s leading scorer and rebounder with 19.8 points and 9.4 boards per game.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

In mid-February, about a week after Wilson suffered his left-hand injury, UNC head coach Hubert Davis said on his semi-weekly radio show the 6-foot-10 Wilson was already on track to return to the floor “soon.”<\/a> At the time, Wilson had been learning to play with a cast on his non-shooting hand.<\/p>\n

He was cleared for individual workouts late last week, according to UNC’s Friday release, but his comeback was derailed by his practice injury.<\/p>\n

Wilson is a former five-star prospect who was the No. 5 overall recruit in last year’s class, according to Rivals. He hit the ground running at UNC, posting a 57.8% field-goal percentage and making his presence known on defense, too, averaging 1.5 steals and 1.4 blocks per game.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

He started his collegiate career by scoring in double figures in each of his 24 games \u2014 no Tar Heels freshman had done that before \u2014 and his 17 20-point games are a freshman program record as well.<\/p>\n

The Atlanta native earned National Player of the Week honors twice and became the ACC Freshman of the Week three times.<\/p>\n

Along with Kansas’ Darryn Peterson, BYU’s AJ Dybantsa and Duke’s Cameron Boozer, Wilson is expected to be a top-four pick in this year’s NBA Draft.<\/p>\n

UNC’s odds to win the national title have now dropped from 80-1 to 150-1, according to BetMGM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Carolina star forward Caleb Wilson needs surgery and will miss the rest of the season after breaking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,7146,6,12,7148,1072,333],"class_list":["post-645214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-draft","tag-basketball","tag-caleb-wilson","tag-nba","tag-nba-draft","tag-seth-trimble","tag-tar-heels","tag-unc"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116187707826519559","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645214","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=645214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}