After a period of time where the Tar Heels were getting more news about who’s staying versus who’s leaving, the pendulum shifted back to who’s leaving on Saturday. Freshman Will Shaver entered the NCAA’s Transfer Portal, after only one season at UNC.

Of the Players Leaving, Shaver’s announcement might be the loss felt the least. He was only able to play in three games all season, and of those played for all of five minutes against The Citadel on December 13th. Around that time, he suffered a broken bone in his foot, and while it was left up in the air for a couple of weeks, in January it was announced he would miss the remainder of the season with surgery on that broken foot.

Shaver was a three-star recruit out of Oak Mountain High School, and actually was able to enroll at UNC in January 2022. It’s tough to know just how much improvement he had made with the way the roster was used during the first part of the season, but now we’ll never know if he would have been able to work himself into the lineup. It is telling with Armando Bacot’s early injuries he didn’t see significant time.

The move comes on the heels of other players leaving: Dontrez Styles, Tyler Nickel, Justin McCoy, and Puff Johnson. Three players so far have announced their intention on returning: Armando Bacot, RJ Davis, and Jalen Washington. That leaves Caleb Love, Seth Trimble, and D’Marco Dunn as the others who haven’t announced their intention for the 2023-24 season. With only two players coming in to replace Leaky Black and Pete Nance, who’ve exhausted their eligibility, there appears to be plenty of room for addition from the transfer Portal. As more teams lose in the NCAA Tournament, more decisions will be pouring out in the next few days.

Decisions from the remaining players should come soon, because if they want to go into the portal, the sooner they can get a leg up on teams still playing, the better. It may be a while before we know who is coming in, though, as such a thorough roster reconstruction will take time for the coaching staff to try and find the right fits.