In one of the least surprising moves ever, David and Travis Wear have elected to transfer to UCLA after leaving UNC this spring. As Tar Heel Fan notes, you want to wish a player well if they decide to transfer, but it’s difficult not to feel a little sour since it seems like this whole thing was orchestrated more by the Wear parents than the twins themselves. Vaguely similar (though not nearly as nasty) to what seemed to happen at Duke with Chris Burgess and, to an extent, Luol Deng. Also, not a good omen for the Wear twins that they’re being mentioned in the same paragraph as Chris Burgess.
Carrick Felix won’t be playing at Duke next year, but it appears he has plenty of other suitors, including Arizona State, UCLA, Baylor, Villanova, Kansas State, and the list goes on. (But wouldn’t it be kind of funny to see him go to Butler, who are actually mentioned among the teams expressing interest?) Also, according to his current coach, the decision not to attend Duke wasn’t related to academics but more with the seemingly minimal amount of playing time he would probably receive with Kyle Singler deciding to return next year.
Vegas has released the early odds on college basketball’s 2010-11 national champion, and to no one’s surprise, the heavy favorite is Duke at 6:1. The two closest teams behind the Blue Devils are Michigan State and Purdue at 10:1 and 12:1, respectively, while Carolina comes in at a pretty respectable 25:1 odds, putting them on par in Vegas’ minds with teams like Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Butler and Florida. I think that sounds about right, but of course I would have said the same thing going into this year…
Finally, though the schedules have yet to be officially finalized, the News & Observer takes a look at this year’s conference schedule breakdown using the three-year rotation, noting that NC State probably has the toughest slate of games next season and Virginia Tech got a couple of nice breaks not having to travel to Duke or Florida State. While I can’t disagree with penciling Duke in for 14 to 16 wins in the ACC next year, I would have thought UNC was good for more than 8 to 10, but again, after this year, it’s hard to argue taking the conservative approach in estimating Tar Heel wins.
