2026 COLLEGE BASKETBALL:
DG’s “Fun Facts & Shout-Outs” Explore
ACC Freshmen, Big Four, UNCW, More
(Weekly Video = Posted Below)
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
(last updated Jan. 16, 2026)
While the focus of our “Time-Out” college basketball show is forward-looking as often as possible, we always take a glance back at the previous week’s action, too, and sometimes we’ll offer some quick mentions to those making impactful headlines on the hardcourt, especially in the National Basketball Association, Atlantic Coast Conference and/or across North Carolina.
With that in mind, below is this week’s edition of “Fun Facts and Shout-Outs,” brought to you by our good friends at Jimmy’s bar and King Neptune restaurant in Wrightsville Beach.
Jimmy’s has a full bar, nightly drink specials and live music 365 days a year(!). (It’s a great place to watch a game, too.) Right next door, King Neptune has become one of the best restaurants in the entire greater Wilmington area.
“Fun Fact #1″
Fun Fact: The ACC, by itself, has half — half! — of the top freshmen in all of college basketball this season, whether you’re talking about two of the top four or five of the top 10. That’s how impressive the league’s rookie class is this year.
By this point, everyone knows about Duke forward Cameron Boozer and UNC forward Caleb Wilson.
Boozer, who is averaging about 23 points and 10 rebounds per game and often initiates the Blue Devils’ offense as a 6-foot-9, 250-pound point forward who’s also dishing out a team-best four assists per game, is the current frontrunner for National Player Of The Year, following in the footsteps of the Devils’ superstar freshman of a year ago, Cooper Flagg.
Wilson, who is averaging about 20 points and 11 rebounds per game, ranks alongside Boozer and BYU forward AJ Dybantsa as another of the three or four best first-year college players in America. Each is well on his way to earning All-America recognition this season and NBA lottery status this summer.
But wait, there’s more — much more.
Virginia forward Thijs De Ridder, Louisville point guard Mykell Brown Jr. and Stanford guard Ebuka Okorie are three more of the best freshmen in college hoops.
De Ridder, who is about to turn 23 years old — yes, 23 — is a 6-9, 238-pound freshman forward from Belgium who had been playing in Spain’s top professional league before joining first-year UVa coach Ryan Odom in Charlottesville. De Ridder is leading the Cavaliers with 16 points per game, while shooting 54 percent from the field and almost 40 percent from 3-point range.
If the 15-man All-ACC team were selected today, De Ridder — like first-teamers Boozer and Wilson, obviously — would be on it somewhere.
Brown, a highly touted point guard who has been slowed by a back injury, nevertheless already has showcased — in spurts — why he also is expected to be an NBA lottery pick this summer. He’s 6-5 and 190 pounds, and while he’s not a great perimeter shooter at this stage of his career, he’s averaging about 17 points and five assists per game for the Cardinals when healthy. It’s not mere coincidence that, so far this season, Louisville is 9-1 when Brown does play and just 3-4 when he doesn’t play.
Finally, whereas Boozer, Wilson, De Ridder and Brown all arrived in the ACC this season with huge expectations, either as a prep All-American or a well-established European standout, Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie has been one of the most pleasant first-year surprises in the entire country.
A 6-2, 185-pound guard, Okorie is the Cardinal’s leading scorer and top assist man, with averages of 23 points and three assists per game.
Whereas Boozer, Wilson and Brown all ranked among the top 10 players in last year’s high school senior class, Okorie barely cracked the top 100. He was the 2025 high school player of the year in New Hampshire as a prep senior, and Stanford coach Kyle Smith — a recent guest on the David Glenn Show — raved about his long-term potential, but nobody expected Okorie (who originally committed to play for Harvard, in the Ivy League) to be among the top players in the ACC — and one of the top 10 freshmen in the entire country — pretty much from the first time he put on a Stanford uniform.
So hats off to Smith for finding another gem and to Okorie for being so sensational so quickly.
Now on to a few quick shout-outs….
This Week’s Shout-Outs
#1—Shout-out to NC State guard Quadir Copeland.
The Wolfpack senior happens to be from my original hometown of Philadelphia, but that’s not why he’s getting a shout-out this week.
When Copeland was a senior in high school, he was not a top-100 recruit. Even after a prep season at IMG Academy in Florida, he barely made the top 150. During his first college season, at Syracuse, Copeland was a little-used reserve under legendary coach Jim Boeheim, and many thought he’d never be more than a role player at the ACC level.
But Copeland improved during his sophomore season with the Orange, when he was an important player off the bench for first-year coach Adrian Autry, and then he became an all-conference player during his single season at McNeese State, under coach Will Wade.
Since following Wade to NC State during the offseason, Copeland has emerged as an All-ACC candidate for the Wolfpack, as he’s averaging about 14 points per game, he ranks among the ACC leaders with about six assists per game, he’s always been a very capable defender, and now he’s being incredibly efficient as a scorer, too, with a 57 percent field goal percentage and a sizzling 52 percent rate on 3-pointers.
It’s a lot more difficult to be an All-ACC player than it is to be an All-Southland Conference player, as he was at McNeese last year, but — after his very humble beginnings in the ACC, at Syracuse, just three years ago — Copeland may be in the process of doing exactly that with the Wolfpack.
#2—Shout-out to Wake Forest guard Juke Harris, who ranks fourth in the ACC in scoring, at about 20 points per game.
Harris was a decent player for the Demon Deacons last year, as a true freshman, when he averaged about six points per game off the bench while showcasing glimpses of his offensive potential.
He must have worked his tail off in the offseason, because now he’s a truly outstanding scorer as a sophomore for the Deacons, and his field goal percentage (43 to 45), 3-point percentage (30 to 34) and free throw percentage (59 to 77) all have improved significantly from a year ago.
While that sort of hard work and personal improvement is worth celebrating for any player at any school, it’s extra-special to us here at the North Carolina Sports Network when it happens with a home-grown product. Harris is from Salisbury High School here in North Carolina, which is located between Charlotte and Greensboro.
Whereas there are North Carolina high school products on every college football team we follow here in the Bold North State, there aren’t nearly as many in-state contributors on the basketball teams we follow.
Harris is one of the best in-state players on any Big Four roster this season, alongside Caleb Foster (Harrisburg) and Isaiah Evans (Fayetteville) of Duke, Jarin Stevenson (Chapel Hill) of UNC, and Paul McNeil Jr. (Rockingham) of NC State.
#3—Shout-out to sixth-year UNC Wilmington head coach Takayo Siddle and the Seahawks, who look like one of the best teams in the Coastal Athletic Association again this season, which is no small feat under the circumstances.
Soon after winning the CAA championship and playing in the NCAA Tournament last year, Siddle and his staff lost their top five players — three to graduation and two to the transfer portal.
Nevertheless, the Seahawks are off to a sizzling 16-2 start this season, with Nolan Hodge, Greedy Williams and Noah Ross — all returning players, and all seniors — among those leading the way.
Meanwhile, the top UNCW newcomer is redshirt junior center Patrick Wessler, a 7-foot, 250-pound Virginia Tech transfer who is averaging about 13 points and a team-best nine rebounds per game. Wessler is a Bold North State product, who competed for both Butler High School and Combine Academy in the Charlotte area during his prep career.
There are other very good teams in the CAA again this year, especially Hofstra, but it’s a lot of fun to see UNCW as a strong candidate for back-to-back conference titles and back-to-back NCAA Tournament bids.
#4—Finally, shout-out to first-year High Point head coach Flynn Clayman and the Panthers, who look like one of the best teams in the Big South Conference again this season, under a different set of tricky circumstances.
It is not easy to “stay great” through both a head coaching change and significant roster turnover, but that’s exactly what the Panthers have accomplished through their 16-4 start this season.
Clayman was High Point’s associate head coach under Alan Huss these last two years, when the Panthers won back-to-back Big South regular-season titles and then — last year — earned the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid by winning the league tournament.
Huss left High Point last spring — he’s now the head-coach-in-waiting at Creighton, his alma mater — but the transition has been smooth since Clayman’s promotion to head coach.
Even though three of the Panthers’ top players transferred to Ole Miss, UNLV and Baylor, and three more exhausted their eligibility, they remain the favorite in the Big South.
This year’s stars include Spanish guard Conrad Martinez, a junior who barely played over the last two years for the Arizona Wildcats but has blossomed at High Point, and leading scorer Cam’Ron Fletcher, a sixth-year senior forward who’s also having by far his best college campaign, after previous stops at Kentucky, Florida State and Xavier.
Those are this week’s Fun Facts and Shout-Outs. Thanks for joining us on the North Carolina Sports Network.
