As the NCAA Tournament gets underway, a few college basketball fans looked back at last year's team and how much the world of college basketball had changed over the last 12 months.
While experts were praising Duke head coach Jon Scheyer for rebuilding the Blue Devils' entire starting lineup after all five starters were selected in last year's NBA Draft, a shocking revelation arose about their rivals.
The North Carolina Tar Heels are a good team; there's no arguing that, but former UNC players have made their mark since leaving the program, and it hasn't been at the next level.
UNC's transfers out have outscored UNC's current roster
UNC head coach Hubert Davis has lost a slew of players to the transfer portal, and for a lot of them, leaving Chapel Hill has worked out even better than sticking around in North Carolina.
From guard Elliot Cadeau leaving UNC for Michigan, who is a No. 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament, to Tyler Nickel and Jalen Washington heading to Vanderbilt, a No. 5-seed in the bracket, the Heels' transfers out have outscored UNC's current roster, which only earned a No. 6-seed.
Making Blue Devils' smiles even wider? The Blue Devils still beat Cadeau while he was playing for the then-No. 1 Michigan Wolverines earlier this season.
Cadeau, Nickel, Washington, Cade Tyson, Ven-Allen Lubin, Ian Jackson, James Okonkwo, Will Shaver, and Puff Johnson have combined for 2,744 points before the NCAA Tournament tipped off. Davis' entire roster in Chapel Hill has scored just 2,553 points so far this season.
Not to mention that almost half of the players who transferred out of UNC landed on teams that earned a better seeding in this year's Big Dance.
UNC's transfers out have outscored UNC's actual roster this season so far. And nearly half have a better NCAA seed pic.twitter.com/2naeZwVqtt
— Shawn Krest (@ShawnKrest) March 19, 2026
Beyond the Wolverines and the Vanderbilt Commodores, the St. John's Red Storm earned a No. 5-seed with Jackson on the roster. Johnson transferred to Ohio State, which earned an eight-seed, and Lubin transferred to NC State, which earned an 11-seed
To put all of this in layman's terms, Scheyer deserves even more praise for preparing his players to excel at the next level and simultaneously keeping the elite talent from transferring out of Duke. A few minutes down the road, Davis needs to seriously reconsider what he's doing with the Tar Heels.