North Carolina has been able to benefit plenty from multiple players leaving in the transfer portal, college coaches changing and getting rid of high school recruits, and other avenues. North Carolina typically finds itself in one of the best positions in all of college basketball year in and year out, and there’s hope that this year isn’t going to be any different. For one newcomer, Kevin Thomas, his recruitment process wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
Thomas was one of the highest-rated prospects in the 2026 class, coming in as a top-100 overall prospect, according to 247. However, the young man who attended five different high schools was originally committed to LSU before the Tigers brought in Will Wade. As a result, he decided to go in a different direction, though.
“When that coaching change happened, it was like a drought for me,” Kevin Thomas said of when LSU hired Will Wade, per Logan Lazarczyk. “I just had to keep my head down, keep working, go to other camps, and then North Carolina came up, and Sean May recruited me, and then Malone texted me wanting me to come on a visit.”
The one point that I wanted to discuss is Michael Malone having an effect on things like this. Malone has proven throughout his young college coaching career, as he hasn’t even coached a game yet officially, that he can recruit with the best of them because of his prior history.
Again, that doesn’t mean he’ll land every recruit in the world, but that NBA experience will matter to a lot of these young men who want to play in the association one day. For Thomas, that was part of the reason why he enjoyed his visit and what the school had to offer.
“Knowing that he’s been in the NBA, somewhere I want to get, and all the other coaches that were on the visit with me, they all won a national championship here,” Thomas said. “So, I just wanted to be a part of that whole winning group.”
Of course, winning recruiting battles doesn’t necessarily mean North Carolina will be a perfect team. However, recruiting is about 80% of the battle nowadays. If Malone can continue to make an impact on these guys, he’s going to find himself in a really good position to land some of the top players in the country like Thomas.
