Jaydon Young’s role at North Carolina looked a little odd last season, and it may get even murkier this year.
The guard cracked the starting five four times for the Tar Heels, even though he played just a little over seven minutes per game. And in each of those starts, he didn’t stay on the floor long before coming out.
North Carolina still won those games with Young in the lineup, but it was one of those curious Hubert Davis decisions that stood out because it felt so out of step with the rest of the rotation. That kind of usage doesn’t seem likely to carry over into this season.
The biggest reason is simple: the backcourt situation has changed. Last season, the Tar Heels were thin there and leaned heavily on their frontcourt, especially Henri Veesaar and Caleb Wilson. Young’s minutes were tied to that lack of guard depth.
This season, though, the guard room looks crowded. Malone has added enough talent that the challenge now is sorting out where the minutes actually go.
Terrence Brown, Matt Able, and Neoklis Avdalas are the names at the front of the line in the backcourt. After them, Isaiah Denis and Kevin Thomas appear next, with Young likely behind that group.
That doesn’t make Young unimportant. It just makes his path to real court time a lot narrower.
There’s also a developmental angle here. If the focus is on building for the future, it makes more sense to get minutes into younger players like Thomas and Denis than to use them on an older player heading into his fourth season.
At the same time, Young chose to come back to North Carolina after the Malone hire, so Malone may still have plans to find him a role somehow.
Either way, the Tar Heels are heading into a season where the guard rotation will have to be sorted out carefully. For Young, the value may come in ways that don’t show up in the box score or on the floor for long stretches.
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