Tag: North Carolina

2024 four-star shooting guard recruit lists Notre Dame among top eight

Think he’ll choose the Irish?

Notre Dame will need shooting and lots of it when the time comes for the program to be competitive again. So it surely must have been good news for [autotag]Micah Shrewsberry[/autotag] and his staff when 2024 four-star shooting guard recruit Austin Swartz told Joe Tipton of On3 that Notre Dame is one of eight finalists for his services. Also making the cut are Indiana, Clemson, Miami, Florida State, Virginia Tech, UConn and Georgia.

Swartz, one of the top 2024 recruits in North Carolina, has scheduled official visits to six of the above schools, but Notre Dame is not one of them. In fact, he already has visited Clemson, and every other school is on his official visit list. It’s unknown whether he’ll make any trips to South Bend, so we’re left to speculate just how serious he is about the Irish. Hopefully, their chances aren’t dead before they’ve actually gotten any life.

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Watch: 4-star safety Malcolm Zigar commits to North Carolina

On Monday the Tar Heels got a big boost to their recruiting class of 2024.

On Monday, the Tar Heels significantly boosted its recruiting class of 2024.

Here’s how Fuquay-Varina (N.C.) four-star safety Malcolm Ziglar announced his commitment to North Carolina football.

Ziglar (6-foot-2, 198 pounds) is also a track star who is ranked fifth overall in the state, No. 17 at his position and No. 192 in the nation going by the 247Sports rankings.

Twenty-five other schools made offers, including South Carolina, Duke, Clemson, ECU and Wake Forest.

More football stories

2024 National Recruiting Rankings: Updated top 25 teams

The longest high shool football winning streak in each state

Alabama basketball lands commitment from four-star PF, Jarin Stevenson

Nate Oats lands massive four-star commitment out of North Carolina

Nate Oats continues to add to an already loaded 2023 Alabama recruiting class by adding four-star power forward, Jarin Stevenson, from Pittsboro, NC. Stevenson is 6’10 and the No. 2 recruit out of North Carolina, so to steal him from right under UNC and Duke is a massive win for Oats and the Tide. Stevenson had recently taken visits to Georgetown, Missouri and Virginia, but ultimately, it was too hard to pass on what Alabama is building right now.

Stevenson is the fourth high school commitment Oats has landed alongside Sam Walters, Mouhamed Dioubate and Kris Parker, all of which are four-star and top 100 players in the class. The Tide also landed Grant Nelson, Latrell Wrightsell Jr. and Aaron Estrada via the transfer portal to entirely revamp their roster.

The Tide will look entirely different in 2023-24 after replacing virtually the entire starting line-up including Brandon Miller and Noah Clowney as well as all three assistant coaches. However, Alabama fans should feel ecstatic with the work Oats has put in this offseason.

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Matchups for 2023 ACC/SEC Women’s Basketball Challenge unveiled

The Irish will get a historic opponent.

With the Big Ten no longer broadcasting on ESPN, the ACC’s annual battle with that conference came to an end. However, ESPN wasn’t willing to let the idea of teams in two major conferences playing each other die. So the SEC was called in to fill the gap left by the Big Ten after ending its annual series with the Big 12. We now know who will be playing who in both the men’s and women’s challenges.

This opens up a world of possibilities for new rivalries to form or old rivalries, perhaps from the NCAA Tournament or notable past nonconference meetings, to reignite. We know the SEC is king in college football, but we’ll see how strong it is in college basketball. The ACC has provided some quality teams recently, and there are a couple of historic and contending teams in the SEC, so in at least some challenge games, that quality should shine through.

Here the matchups for the women’s challenge:

Matchups for 2023 ACC/SEC Men’s Basketball Challenge unveiled

The Irish are headed to the Palmetto State.

With the Big Ten no longer broadcasting on ESPN, the ACC’s annual battle with that conference came to an end. However, ESPN wasn’t willing to let the idea of teams in two major conferences playing each other die. So the SEC was called in to fill the gap left by the Big Ten after its annual challenge with the Big 12. We now know who will be playing who in both the men’s and women’s challenges.

This opens up a world of possibilities for new rivalries to form or old rivalries, perhaps from the NCAA Tournament or notable past nonconference meetings, to reignite. We know the SEC is king in college football, but we’ll see how strong it is in college basketball. Then again, the ACC hasn’t been great the past couple of years, so maybe this won’t be the best time to compare the two conferences unless the ACC comes roaring out of the gate.

Here the matchups for the men’s challenge:

Vols to play at North Carolina in 2023

Tennessee to play at North Carolina in 2023.

The inaugural men’s basketball ACC/SEC Challenge will be held during the 2023-24 season.

Tennessee will play at North Carolina in the ACC/SEC Challenge on Nov. 29. Tipoff is slated for 7:15 p.m. EDT at Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Tennessee is 114-100 all time versus current members of the ACC. Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes is 75-75 against ACC competition, including a 7-12 record versus the Tar Heels.

The Vols will tip off its 2023-24 season on Nov. 10 at Wisconsin.

Tennessee’s home SEC contests during the 2023-24 campaign will feature the following matchups: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Kentucky, LSU, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.

The Vols’ road SEC games will be against Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.

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Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play 2023: Top 100 U.S. public-access courses ranked

Check out Golfweek’s top 100 U.S. public-access golf courses in 2023.

Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2023 list of the Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play in the U.S. Each year, we publish many lists, with this selection of public-access layouts among the premium offerings.

The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to 8 range.

All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort, or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Each course is listed with its 2022 ranking in parenthesis in the title line, its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers.

KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern or classic courses in the U.S.

* Indicates new to or returning to this list.

More Golfweek’s Best

Who wears blue the best in NCAA football?

Who wears blue the best?

Normally you don’t hear much about which specific color is worn best in the NCAA, usually it’s best uniform or helmet. Well, today, Fox Sports College Football’s twitter account sent out this question:

So, without taking any suggestions from the internet, we’ll stick with the eight teams nominated and rank them from eight to one.

Big Ten opponents Notre Dame should play annually if it ever joins

Just picture at least some of these games happening annually.

The Big Ten has unveiled its “Flex Protect Plus” scheduling model, which will take effect when USC and UCLA join the conference in 2024. Eleven particular matchups will be protected and thus played every year, and every school will play every school at least twice over a four-year period. There will be both annual and rotating matchups over each team’s nine-game league schedule.

Which brings us to Notre Dame. We all know about the Irish being denied entry into the Big Ten in the 20th century’s early years, but times areMidw changing. With college football’s landscape radically changing soon, questions about the feasibility of the Irish’s longtime independence are being raised. Plus, with their next athletic director currently heading NBC Sports Group and the Big Ten about to start a long-term TV deal with NBC, the Irish almost seem destined for full-time Big Ten membership.

Now, before you Irish traditionalists hang me from the top of the Golden Dome, really think about this. Many of the Irish’s most frequent opponents in their history are based in the Midwest. This would revive annual or semi-annual rivalries that largely have been discarded to fulfill obligations to the East Coast-centeric ACC. Nothing against that conference, but Wake Forest, North Carolina and Georgia Tech just seem to be awkwardly forced upon the fan base by the arrangement and don’t exactly rile anyone up.

In the event of a Big Ten membership, certain parameters will have to be set for the Irish. They definitely would need to keep Navy as one of its nonconference opponents because any season not completely compromised by COVID that doesn’t have the Midshipmen just seems wrong. Other than that, there are some opponents that need to be scheduled every year or at least merit consideration for that. Here are the ones most worth considering:

Notre Dame commit Cole Certa heading to IMG Academy

Nice opportunity for him.

A month ago, Notre Dame received its first 2024 recruiting class commit in shooting guard [autotag]Cole Certa[/autotag]. He was recruited out of Bloomington Central Catholic in Illinois. But he has decided that that school is no longer sufficient to continue his athletic growth. He has announced that his final year before joining the Irish will be sent at IMG Academy, the famous sports prep school in Bradenton, Florida:

Certa, a three-star recruit weighing in at 6-foot-4 and 165 pounds, is heading to a school that has produced some quality talent. Among them are Purdue star and reigning national player of the year Zach Edey and North Carolina’s Armando Bacot. Several alumni also have gone onto the NBA, including Anfernee Simons, Dwight Powell, Josh Green and Jonathan Isaac. What’s more, Kyle Brey, son of former Irish coach [autotag]Mike Brey[/autotag], is the coach of the varsity football team.

While Certa’s decision is a loss for the state of Illinois, it’s necessary for him to take the next step in his game. Here’s hoping it works out for him and eventually, the Irish.

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