When the Tar Heels entered the race for Wilson back on May 11th, one day after he released his top seven schools list, it would have been a little far-fetched to say that the team would be the favorite heading into his commitment a couple of months later. However, that appeared to be the case heading into Sunday’s decision. Wilson, just as Tony Grimes did, had established a strong relationship with former Virginia-based Tar Heel Dré Bly and that seemed to have paid off very well for the Tar Heels hopes. As of Friday afternoon, the Tar Heels held all seven of the crystal ball predictions from 247Sports, including confident predictions from both Steve Wiltfong and Brian Dohn. The Tar Heels also held a major edge amongst Rivals experts, as they held 100% of the predictions there, as well.
On Friday evening, though, everything suddenly shifted from North Carolina to South Carolina. Both Wiltfong and Dohn significantly dropped their confidence on their pick and Rivals’ Mike Farell even flipped his pick in favor of the Gamecocks. A short time later, sources at Inside Carolina began saying that they expect that the Tar Heels will not be the selection, a seismic shift from earlier in the day where the Tar Heels were picking up new crystal ball predictions in their favor. As of this morning, nearly every expert on both the 247Sports and Rivals sites have flipped their prediction to South Carolina and all of them appear to be high confidence picks. Keeshawn Silver's tweet on Saturday morning seems to say it all.
Penn State was the team thought to be the biggest threat to the Tar Heels up until a couple of weeks ago, but down the stretch this has become a battle of the Carolinas for his commitment. After dominating the past two months of his recruitment to become a heavy favorite, it seems like something major has happened behind the scenes, opening the door for the Gamecocks. It would be a shock if the pick isn't South Carolina.
Prediction: South Carolina