Lucas: Another Dimension

By Adam Lucas

CHARLOTTE—You are here to read about the freshman who did something incredible this week. Of course you are. This is the ACC Tournament. He has been on television. He has been on the internet. Thursday night, he performed well in his team's quarterfinal game and then had to answer questions from a swarm of reporters, all of whom wanted to know how he could have possibly done it.

We are talking, of course, about Nassir Little. And the "swarm" was one person, but I'm rangy.

Little had six rebounds in 15 minutes in Thursday's win over Louisville, giving him more rebounds per minute than any Tar Heel who played in the game. A couple of Little's rebounds were of the spectacular variety, including a second-half board he soared to grab over VJ King.

No one expects his rebounding clips to show up on SportsCenter, naturally, since their airwaves are already fully committed to other topics. He made just two field goals, and nobody logs on to social media to watch rebounding highlights.

Little truly doesn't seem to care, as long as the team is winning. When he's in the game, he's found a better fit within the Carolina attack. And when he's on the bench, if you'll watch him, he's usually the first to celebrate when any Tar Heel does something good.

"I've always been good at rebounding," he says. "I'm trying to embrace my role on this team and give them a lift off the bench by getting some boards."

It's not a stretch to say that Carolina is here, on March 15, at 27-5 due at least partially to that exact attitude. Little could have poisoned the locker room. Players not as good as him have done that on past teams. He hasn't, and by being unwilling to question the coaches or politic for playing time, he's become less interesting to the media. So maybe you've forgotten about him, or maybe you didn't notice his solid 15 minutes for a team with big March aspirations.

What you also may not have noticed is a tiny news item in the blitz of ACC Tournament stories: this week, the ACC announced that Nassir Little had made Academic All-ACC.

He looked almost surprised when asked about it on Thursday night. But it seemed only fair. Remember back in November and December, when there was endless speculation about his happiness in Chapel Hill? It turns out that Little was so frustrated that he went back to his dorm room, opened a book and…studied.

"It's hard to make A's if you're just a regular student," Little said. "It definitely gets overlooked how tough it is to combine being an athlete and a scholar. But the people who know, they know. Coach Williams made a big point to acknowledge that about me, and that meant a lot."

You know, maybe Roy Williams does know a little something about how to mentor Nassir Little, after all.

"My brain is going to last longer than my basketball career," Little said. "While I'm able to play, it's important to me to embrace the opportunity I have to get a free education. Not many people have that chance, and everyone expects me to put athletics first. I want to embrace both sides."

Well, no wonder there's never been a Nassir Cam. Who wants to watch him read a book anyway?

In the last 25 years, exactly three Tar Heels prior to this season had made Academic All-ACC as a freshman: Tyler Zeller, Marcus Paige and Luke Maye.

Yes, you're correct. That means Little basically takes a place alongside the very best student-athletes that have played for Carolina in the last quarter-century. All three of Zeller, Paige and Maye eventually won the Skip Prosser Award as the ACC's best men's basketball scholar-athlete.

Twenty-five basketball players in the Atlantic Coast Conference managed the 3.0 last semester and the cumulative 3.0 in their college career, combined with athletic achievements which are a component of the selection, necessary to earn Academic All-ACC. Exactly one of those 25 was a freshman: Nassir Little.

So it's true, there really are freshmen doing incredible things in the ACC this week...whether anyone noticed or not.

"I never want to be a one-dimensional person," Little said. "That's how I've always been. To this day, I believe education is more important than basketball. People only want to talk about basketball, and that's fine. But at the end of the day I have to do whatever I can to make sure I'm as educated as I can be in order to be the man I want to be."

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Nassir Little

Luke Maye

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