According to the Denver Post, he is on their radar:
Denver will not stand pat. With a draft choice late in the first round, it’s believed the Nuggets are eyeing North Carolina point guard Ty Lawson. The team also is known to have recently scouted young European center Marc Gasol, currently property of the Memphis Grizzlies and a prospect who might be ready to emerge from the shadow of his big brother with the Lakers.
Denver owns the 20th pick in the draft which would be enough to keep Lawson in the draft. I also think that information like this is what Roy Williams gets when he talks to various teams meaning when these guys declare they are aware of interest from certain scouts. Fans often assume that the mock drafts and ESPN analysis is all the players are using to decide. In the case of Tar Heel players, Roy talks to a lot of people and probably gets assessments similar to this one. And we can safely assume Denver was one of the 18 teams Roy spoke with since UNC alum George Karl is the head coach there.
Obviously this process has a ways to go but an interesting “nugget” nonetheless.
Junior reserve forward Mike Copeland has a partially torn ACL ligament in his knee which will require surgery to repair. Copeland is expected to be out until the end of the year which would cut fairly deep into his senior season. The knee was injured during a pickup game last week.
While he has not been a huge contributor, Roy often used Copeland in spurts to relieve the Tar Heel post players, an area UNC is about to get even deeper in with the arrival of Tyler Zeller and Ed Davis. With that being the case you have to wonder if redshirting might be a better option for Copeland. We will see how it shakes out.
For those of you who don’t know APR stands for Academic Progress Rate and is a part of the NCAA’s efforts to make sure schools actually graduate athletes. The report for UNC can be found here in PDF format. The men’s basketball team scored a 995 based on a period from 2003 to 2007 which is fairly impressive when you consider there were five early entrants to the NBA Draft during that time. Apparently those players are keeping their academic standing up. Baseball also ranked highly with a 985 as did men’s tennis, women’s golf and fencing. The latter two scored a 1000. Among the sports at UNC scoring on the lower end were men’s golf, men’s track and women’s soccer.
On a personal note, my alma mater, UNC Greensboro was penalized for poor ratings in men’s basketball and baseball. I am willing to bet AD Nelson Bobb is not a happy man since I cannot count the number of times the student in student-athlete was emphasized during my three years of running cross country there.
Maybe you have noticed but I have been very circumspect discussing what I think will happen during the next basketball season simply because everything is still very much in the air concerning what the roster will look like. And it is not just the NBA water testers but also late recruits such as Duke securing Mason Plumlee after he decided not to attend Stanford. For myself I see zero point in attempting to predict next season when we are not sure who UNC will have. That being said….
Let me state upfront I am not into conspiracy theories but this chain of events is quite interesting:
1. Joe Alleva leaves the AD position at Duke for the same position at LSU
2. LSU hires Stanford’s Trent Johnson to be the head men’s basketball coach at LSU.
3. Stanford hires Duke assistant Johnny Dawkins to replace Johnson at Stanford.
4. Stanford 2008 commit Miles Plumlee asks to be released from his LOI; Dawkins obliges.
5. Plumlee commits to Duke where his younger brother, Mason Plumlee is already a 2009 commitment.
Now, if I am not mistaken, Trent Johnson to LSU was in the works prior to Alleva coming on board or at best it was simulataneous. I do think it is odd that Dawkins was willing to release Plumlee to Duke which is his former(and future?) employer. I tend to think you should force kids to honor their LOIs since they signed with the school and not the coach. Dawkins even said he thought Plumlee would end up at Duke which is convenient he could help his old coach out by sending him a 6-10 forward for next season.
In the end there is really nothing funny here, unless you think the “Dawkins releasing Plumlee so he could commit to Duke” action points Dawkins caring more about Duke than he does his new employer. Overall it is just an weird circle of events that started at Duke and ended at Duke.
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Drafts, NBA, UNC Basketball | 
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