Recruiting Class Breakdown: Kendall Marshall, 2010

Kendall Marshall was one injury away from leading the 2011-2012 squad to a national championship. That same team had a junior Dexter Strictland, juniors John Henson and Leslie McDonald, sophomores Harrison Barnes and Reggie Bullock, and freshmen P.J. Hairston and James Michael McAdoo. And not to mention, Marshall was a sophomore himself — a talented one at that.

Roy Williams had a pretty good roster, to put it mildly. A roster that had the firepower to win what would have been Coach Williams' third championship (would have had four by the end of his career).

There is a long excerpt on GoHeels talking about Marshall's career at UNC which I have provided down below:

"Marshall played two seasons as a Tar Heel from 2010-12 and four seasons in the NBA, where he had nearly a 3 to 1 assist-error ratio. He was second in the NBA in assists in 2014 for the Los Angeles Lakers. He earned his undergraduate degree from UNC in 2018.

The Dumfries, Va., native was one of the best passers in college basketball history. He moved into the starting lineup in January of his freshman season and led UNC to consecutive appearances in the ACC Tournament finals and NCAA Elite Eight, piling up assists in record time.

As a sophomore, he earned first-team All-America honors (CBSSports.com) and ran a Tar Heel attack that earned a No. 1 seed in the Midwest Regional. Marshall suffered a broken wrist in Carolina’s NCAA second-round win over Creighton and was unable to play in UNC’s next two Tournament games.

He won the Bob Cousy Award in 2012 as the nation’s top point guard, became Carolina’s all-time leader in assist average with 7.96 per game and the ACC’s career leader in assist-error ratio at 3.01. He is second in ACC history in assists per game and concluded his career eighth in UNC history in assists.

Marshall recorded 10 or more assists 23 times.As a sophomore he also earned third-team All-America honors from the Associated Press and was a second-team All-ACC selection. He set the ACC single-season record for assists with 351, the fourth-most in NCAA history.

He led the nation in assist-error ratio (3.5) and was second in assists per game (9.8). He established the ACC single-season record for highest assist average and had second-best assist-error ratio in ACC single-season history.

In 2011, he was a first-team Freshman All-America and was a third-team All-ACC after leading the ACC in assists with 6.2 per game. Marshall was a high school All-America at Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Va., where he won the 2010 Virginia Independent Schools Division I championship."

Per ESPN, he was a four-star recruit with a rating of 95 — No. 7 in his position. The Dumfries, Virginia native formed the foundation of what a pass-first point guard looked like (Elliot Cadeau from this past season was the closest thing to Marshall in recent memory).

When Hubert Davis earned the job as the next head coach, he decided not to retain Marshall (who was a part of Roy Williams' staff prior), so the two went their separate ways before the 2021-2022 year began.

Approximately 13 years later, the Tar Heels are entering Coach Davis' fifth season as head coach. The times have changed with NIL, so the challenge has grown in other areas not named basketball. But Seth Trimble and Caleb Wilson are part of the upcoming roster with hopes of securing the school's seventh men's basketball national championship.

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