3 UNC Men’s Basketball Players Named to Preseason Watch List

Three members of the UNC men’s basketball team have been named to preseason watch lists by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

The preseason lists came out on Tuesday, with Marcus Paige, Brice Johnson and Justin Jackson placed on the rundown of the top players in the country at each of their positions.

The senior Paige was named to the Bob Cousy Point Gurad watch list, while senior forward Brice Johnson was named for the Karl Malon Power Forward position and Justin Jackson singled out for the Julius Erving Small Forward of the Year positional award. Each list contains 20 of the top players at each position in the country.

Paige is the unquestioned leader of the Tar Heel team. The senior from Iowa earned first team All-ACC honors in 2014 and was named to the second and third teams in 2015. Paige needs just nine three pointers to set the all-time record at UNC. Carolina is the only school with three Cousy Award winners, according to a release from the university, with past recipients Raymond Felton, in 2005, Ty Lawson, in 2009, and Kendall Marshall, in 2012.

The South Carolina native Johnson, another senior, averaged nearly 13 points and eight rebounds for the Tar Heels last season on his way to being named third-team All-ACC.

Jackson, just a sophomore, came into Carolina as one of the most highly-recruited high school seniors in the country. As a freshman, the Texas native averaged 10.7 points per game and scored in double figures in six of the seven post-season games.

The Hall of Fame is scheduled to announce the 20 pre-season candidates for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award for the nation’s top center later this week.

The watch lists will be narrowed to 10 candidates in mid-February and five finalists in March, then presented to Cousy, Erving, Malone and their respective selection committees. The winners of the awards will be presented at the 2nd annual ESPN College Basketball Awards Show from Club Nokia in Los Angeles on Friday, April 8th.