Late Night is North Carolina’s season-opening public celebration to start the basketball season. Five-star guard Simeon Wilcher decided to use the occasion to also start UNC’s 2023 recruiting class. The five-star prospect committed to the Tar Heels from afar during the event on Friday night.
Hubert Davis and his staff — Jeff Lebo was the lead assistant — essentially launched and successfully closed their recruitment of the the 6-foot-4 guard from Roselle (N.J.) Catholic in six weeks. Davis extended the scholarship offer at the start of September, visited Roselle Catholic twice during that month, and then hosted Wilcher for an official visit in Chapel Hill last weekend.
Wilcher departed his first UNC trip saying the highlight of his visit was the time he spent with the current, and former (Roy Williams), Tar Heel coaches.
“The thing that was unique to me was that everybody on the coaching staff played at North Carolina and they loved it so much that they came back on the staff,” Wilcher told Inside Carolina. “All those guys played at the highest level you can play at or coach. That’s one of a kind because you can’t really find that many other places.”
Added his mother, Kim: “The relationships you see, not just with the players, but the coaches themselves. I was impressed with the fact that every coach went to the school and played there. That tells you about how they feel about the school. It takes away some of the drama of coaches coming from other places, because they’re all on the same page because they came from the same thing. It was beautiful. It was a wonderful atmosphere of people who care about each other, who want to make these kids better in all aspects – academics, who they are as people, and who they will be as men.”
Wilcher saw UNC after taking visits to UConn and Nebraska (where his brother, C.J., plays). More campus visits were expected, but Chapel Hill ended up being his final trip. Other offering schools involved Auburn, Georgia Tech, Iowa, Kansas, Miami, Ohio State, Oregon, and St. John’s.
North Carolina recruited Wilcher for the lead guard position, and he was the first to officially visit from among four lead guard offers that the UNC staff extended to 2023 prospects.
Andy Borman, director of the NY Rens AAU program on Nike’s EYBL circuit — the same team that UNC’s R.J. Davis led two years ago — calls Wilcher a “prototypical modern point guard.”
“He can run a team like an old school point guard when he needs to,” Borman said. “He has really good size and offensively he can do everything. He can impose his will physically when it comes to it. He can shoot it, score it, and pass it.
“Defensively he is a monster. He’s probably up there I’d say with a kid I had (former Georgia Tech guard) Jose Alvarado. Simeon and Jose are probably the two best on-ball defenders that I’ve ever coached. He also knows how to play with good players. This past year for us, he was playing the point guard spot with a bunch of studs and ran the show. That’s easier said than done, especially for a younger kid, to determine where the ball goes … you see him doing things at a high level that other guys just can’t.”
Wilcher is ranked the No. 14 prospect in the nation and the No. 3 combo guard, according to the 247Sports Composite.
“Simeon at this stage is more of a scoring combo guard, but his passing and playmaking and facilitating on-the-ball skills are improving,” said 247Sports national recruiting analyst Travis Branham. “There’s a lot of potential there. Playing up against guys more physically mature (last AAU season), you saw some turnovers and him not being as efficient as you’d like, but he was playing a year up. He can make shots from three. A guy with a lot of potential.”
