Livescore
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Caleb Love is leaving the North Carolina basketball program after three seasons that ran a gamut of explosive highs and sinking lows, he announced on Monday. The junior guard said he will enter the transfer portal.
“My time at UNC has been rewarding and has inspired me to grow on and off the court. I’m extremely thankful to God for this journey,” Love said in his announcement. “I’d like to give a special thank you to Coach Roy Williams for opening up the door of opportunity by recruiting me to play at UNC and to live out my dream of playing for this program. Thanks to coach Hubert Davis and the coaching staff for allowing me to play under their leadership the last two years and constantly challenging me. To my teammates, I will always cherish the bonds we created over the years and the memories that will last a lifetime.
“I’ve taken some time with my family to reevaluate what’s best for me to continue to grow as a player and I’ve decided to enter the transfer portal to continue my journey. Thank you, UNC family and community, for embracing a kid from St. Louis. I will love you all forever.”
Love’s decision ends his eventful career with the Tar Heels, during which he became one of the more polarizing figures to play for UNC and come through the ACC recently.
According to Inside Carolina’s Sherrell McMillan, Love met with coach Hubert Davis on March 12, the Sunday night when UNC wasn’t included among the NCAA Tournament field and the Tar Heels declined to participate in the NIT, thus pulling the plug on their disappointing 20-13 season. The expectation around the program since then, per McMillan, has been that Love would move on from UNC.
Love’s departure marks the highest-profile exit for the Tar Heels in what already has been an eventful offseason of change for Hubert Davis and Co., and also breaks up his long backcourt partnership with fellow guard and classmate RJ Davis. Love played in 101 games and had 96 starting assignments, the highly regarded former five-star recruit a starter since Day One as freshman in the 2020-21 season, the last year at the coaching helm for UNC legend Roy Williams.
He’ll forever be remembered for the monumental 3-pointer he buried over Duke’s outstretched 7-foot-1 Mark Williams with 24.8 seconds remaining in last season’s Final Four showdown between the longtime rivals — a supreme dagger that sent shockwaves through Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, and propelled the Tar Heels, once a bubble team in danger of missing the 2022 tournament, to their third NCAA championship game appearance in six years.
“One of his talents is his ability to get hot, and his ability to make the contested shot,” Hubert Davis said last month. “We don’t go to the (NCAA) championship game last year without him making shots against UCLA or without him making big shots against Duke in the Final Four. Out of all of our players, especially in late-game pressure situations, he’s the one guy that not only has the confidence to make it, but has the confidence and wants to shoot it. Sometimes he toes the line with trying to help the team out so much from a standpoint of trying to shoot us back in.
“There are so many other ways and so many layers to his game that he can present out there on the floor. Those are things that we talk about all the time, and I feel like he’s getting better at it.”
Love led UNC in scoring (career-high average of 16.7 points per game) and 3-point makes (73) this season, though he took 88 more shots from the field and 70 more 3-point attempts than his next-closest teammate (RJ Davis) in those categories, while logging the most minutes (35.7 per game) on a Tar Heels team that again put a heavy usage load on its starters. His 2.9 assists per game checked in second on the team this season, but Love also committed 87 more turnovers across the last three seasons than his next-closest teammate in that department. He coughed up 277 turnovers during that span, while Davis had 190 and big man Armando Bacot had 189. Love ranked fifth in the ACC in scoring and fourth in the league in minutes played this season, and was named honorable mention all-conference for the second season in a row.
Love finished as the least-accurate shooter (37.8 percent from the field) on one of the worst shooting teams in UNC history this season. The Tar Heels’ 43.4-percent shooting from the field checked in at 13th in the ACC — only Georgia Tech and Louisville were lower — and 247th nationally out of the 352 teams on the Division I level. No ACC team shot worse from 3-point range than UNC’s 31.2 percent, which ranked 317th nationally. And Love’s 29.9-percent shooting beyond the arc (73-for-244) contributed to that. Many of the Tar Heels’ 13 losses this season can be traced to offense that stagnated and shots that simply didn’t connect.
But while inefficient and prone to slumps and lapses, Love’s talent and confidence and fearless flair for the dramatic also proved undeniable. He delivered his three highest-scoring games of last season in the NCAA Tournament, underlined by his 27-point tour de force during the second half to lift UNC past UCLA in the Sweet 16 — Love erupted for 30 points that night altogether — and his superb 28-point performance that helped deny Duke in the Final Four, powered by 22 points poured in during the second half.
“Caleb’s an unbelievable player,” former UNC forward Brady Manek said the night the Tar Heels defeated Duke in the 2022 Final Four, marveling at Love’s heroics. “The things he’s been doing for us in the tournament, those second-half points he’s had several times, it’s unbelievable.”
A few feet away from Manek that night, Love was soaking it all in at the Superdome. He said he was in awe, too.
“For us to come in here and beat them on a Final Four stage, it’s unbelievable,” he said. “All the emotion came out because we know what we’ve been through, the ups and downs this year. People were talking about how Carolina wasn’t Carolina anymore, and we heard everything.”
At the end of this season, Love’s final two games were emblematic. He pumped in 22 points, rolling to his 11th effort of at least 20 points on the season, as UNC dumped an 85-61 beatdown on Boston College to open the ACC Tournament earlier this month.
A night later, though, Love struggled to 11 points on more high-volume shooting. He handed out six assists, his second-best total of the season, but went 3-for-15 from the field, including 2-for-10 from 3-point range, against Virginia’s grinding brand of dogged defense, and UNC fell 68-59 in the ACC quarterfinals.
That loss to Virginia had a feeling of finality descending on the Tar Heels, whose NCAA Tournament fate appeared to be sealed. Love said then, in reference to UNC perhaps playing in the NIT as a consolation, that he wanted to be able to claim a title with this season’s group of Tar Heels.
“These are my guys,” he said that night at the Greensboro Coliseum. “And I obviously want to win something for this team. Whatever is in the best interest for this team is what I want to do.”
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