There’s a new blue blood program in the race to land Tre Mann.
Tuesday night — on election day, no less — Rivals.com analyst Corey Evans posted a Tweet that indicated that North Carolina had lined up an official visit with the Class of 2019 point guard from The Villages, Fla.
Big deal, right? It’s not as if UNC has trouble getting in with the top players in each class, and, at No. 30 in the 2019 class, it certainly makes sense that Mann would consider the Tar Heels.
The reason this is a big deal, however, is that earlier this summer Mann named his list of finalists and UNC was not on it. Kansas, Florida and Tennessee were.
In mid-July, however, Mann officially reopened his recruitment and quickly proceeded to pick up a bunch of new offers. Iowa State, North Carolina State and Auburn were among the new schools that offered Mann a scholarship shortly after he opened things back up.
At the time, the Tar Heels had not yet gotten involved with Mann, but now that they have, it’s clear that the Mann camp is intrigued by what UNC and coach Roy Williams have to offer.
According to his Twitter account, Mann officially received an offer from UNC on July 30 after a strong showing at the Fab 48, one of the final AAU events of the summer in Las Vegas. That came on the heels of Mann’s stellar performance at the famed Peach Jam event, where some analysts named him one of the top performers regardless of position.
It’s hard to know exactly what this will mean in the big picture, but Mann, who was offered by KU on April 30 and had previously planned to make an announcement on July 30, has said that he is currently “wide open” with his recruitment.
The news of this new official visit to North Carolina does not mean that UNC is Mann’s new leader or that he’ll sign with Carolina and turn his back on those other three schools who have been recruiting him for months, even years in some cases.
But it does mean that the race to land the 6-foot-4, 170-pound point guard just got a little tougher for all three programs and the rest of the country.
Mann Tweeted on Tuesday that he plans to visit UNC on Sept. 14. According to reports, he already has made official visits to Tennessee and Florida.
Whether KU gets one of Mann’s two other official visits remains to be seen and may not be all that important.
“The school is just extra for me like when I go see the campus and stuff like that,” Mann recently told Grant Ramey of Tennessee’s 247 Sports site. “It’s really just the relationships.”
Regardless of where things go from here, KU’s interest in Mann makes perfect sense. His size and length make him one of those classic combo-guard play-makers that KU coach Bill Self has had a ton of success with at the point guard position throughout his KU career.
As of today, Kansas has one oral commitment in the Class of 2019 and that is from Chicago point guard Markese Jacobs, who committed to KU after an unofficial visit to Late Night in 2016.
September 14th https://t.co/W9TWJ2nffS
— Tre Mann (@tre2mann3) August 8, 2018
https://twitter.com/tre2mann3/status/1026676164612513792