Looking ahead to 2027’s men’s professional drafts for UNC athletics

In the past, especially for the NFL Draft, I’ve written look-ahead articles that preview the pro prospects still on UNC rosters and what their outlook is for the next 365 days. With no UNC players picked in the 2026 NFL Draft, such an article didn’t make sense, but now that UNC has produced 2 NBA Draft picks and 6 MLB Draft picks this summer, it feels more worth previewing all three major men’s sports in terms of the pros that they might produce next year.

The 8 players drafted are an increase from the 6 in 2025 (Omarion Hampton, Drake Powell, Luke Stevenson, Kane Kepley, Aidan Haugh, Jake Knapp), though with 3 first-round picks, the previous year was a little more top-heavy. Both are a bit of a downturn from the 10 in 2024 (3 NFL, 1 NBA, 6 MLB, though Haugh counts twice for ‘24 and ‘25), so I’ll be looking for the athletic department at large to keep the positive momentum going.

Football

This year was the first since 2016 in which UNC football didn’t have a player selected in the NFL Draft, another inauspicious mark on Bill Belichick’s record in Chapel Hill. While I don’t necessarily think he’s going to turn this into a streak, it’s hard to know for sure because of how young and unknown this roster is; the Heels are banking on a lot of guys to do things that they haven’t really done before — whether that’s transfers in for a larger role or players fresh out of high school being asked to excel as college players immediately out of the gate.

That said, they’ve got an established guy on each side of the ball who’s going to be the main subject of everything written about this team this fall:

• Wide receiver Jordan Shipp had a mini-breakout year in 2025, making plays in every game despite a badly quarterbacked and worse-coordinated offense en route to 671 yards and 6 of UNC’s 13 receiving touchdowns. The 6’2, 190-pounder is a smooth route runner with excellent hands that he uses to pluck the ball away from his frame and win contested catches, and I also love his physicality against press. I don’t know that he has the top-end speed to really thrive in the NFL in the role he plays in college, but there’s no doubt he plays the game at a high level. New offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino has a history of getting really high production out of his best ball-carrying positions, so Shipp has an opportunity to take another leap in productivity and really get himself on the map as a junior. I see him as an early-mid Day 3 pick with some room to rise.
• On defense, there was nothing mini about edge rusher Melkart Abou-Jaoude’s breakout, as the transfer from Delaware led the ACC in sacks with 10.5 in his first season as a Tar Heel. Still, I’m a little lower on his draft prospects than Shipp’s. For one, he was draft-eligible this year and didn’t declare, which both makes him an older prospect than Shipp and likely means the NFL didn’t value him enough for him to go pro after a 10-sack season in a weaker draft. For another, the tape shows me a pretty good player who collected 8 of his 10.5 sacks in a three-week span, 5 of them against the hapless offensive lines of Syracuse and Stanford. Abou-Jaoude, at 6’5 and 260 pounds, has NFL size and length for sure, and decent foot speed to beat bad college offensive tackles, but I didn’t see the kind of bend that an NFL evaluator would be looking for. To me, basically all of his best plays were 2nd-effort sacks, which are not nothing and show a good ability to reset his anchor and win in the trenches with power, but it’s a red flag that I didn’t see him consistently beating competent offensive linemen with his first move, either with speed, power, or counter. I wouldn’t be surprised to see his pass-rush productivity take a decent dip. He does play the run well, which will help him in the process, and I do think he’s a draftable player, but it’ll likely be in Rounds 6-7.
• Besides those two, it’s a whole lot of projection. I’d keep an eye on offensive lineman Aidan Banfield, running back Kaleb Jackson, and tight end Jelani Thurman. Jackson and Thurman are transfers from elite programs who have flashed some traits but need to put together a season, while Banfield has been a quality player when he’s been on the field but needs to stay healthy and show some progression in his game. I’m not sure any of them has a ceiling higher than Round 5 or so, but getting any or all of them to that level would mean a relatively good season for Belichick in round 2 likely accompanied it.

Basketball

Michael Malone isn’t going to have a Caleb Wilson-level talent on his first roster in Chapel Hill; that would’ve been true had Dylan Mingo come to campus and is even more so the case now. But he’s got a few players who are on NBA radars, nonetheless, and while some of their success and ultimate draft prospects are, like with the football program, ultimately up to projection, there’s a bit more of a foundation here.

• Opinions will differ on who the top prospect on this team is, but I suspect it’s more likely than not Sayon Keita, the big man from Mali via FC Barcelona. Keita is still growing into his body and it’ll be very instructive to see how he handles the physicality of the bigs on UNC’s schedule, but he’s a great athlete with a serious knack for shot-blocking and rebounding. At his 6’11 height and especially with a plus wingspan, that will get you drafted, and probably in the first round, as long as you can show soft hands and avoid turnovers. He’ll be an upside play, because the offense isn’t very polished beyond dunks and putbacks, but the NBA likes to make those in the middle and back of the first round. There is a world where his body simply isn’t ready for higher-level ball this time next year and he’s returning to college, but I think that’s less likely than the alternative.
• Matt Able, the guard transfer from N.C. State who extended his pre-draft process as long as possible before announcing that he’d play for UNC this year, is kind of the anti-Keita — where the big man is a ceiling play, Able is more of a high-floor guy, with below-average measured athleticism but a mature game that features a smooth jump shot from midrange and outside the arc, some secondary playmaking chops, and sound positional defense. His rim pressure is inconsistent; he can catch defenders off guard because of how he finishes with both hands, but he doesn’t have the first step or vertical explosiveness to get in the lane consistently, and that’ll be a limiting factor for NBA teams, but if the shooting efficiency can hold in a more featured role, it’s easy to see him making a career of it at the next level. I could see him being selected anywhere from the late lottery to the early second round.
• Neoklis Avdalas was a trendy name for the ‘26 draft this time last year, but an ice-cold conference season at Virginia Tech took him off the board. The traits are obvious; he’s a preternaturally gifted passer at 6’9 who can bully opposing point guards when he’s on the ball and can be a great switchable perimeter defender when he’s locked in. He flashed a jump shot early in the season last year but shot really poorly in conference play, and like Able, he’s not a good enough athlete to consistently beat a defender 1-on-1 when necessary — though his height means he can sometimes just go over a guy’s head. If Malone can help fix the jump shot and get Avdalas to stay engaged for 40 minutes a game, he could be a first-rounder. If it’s more of the same as we saw down the stretch in Blacksburg, he could go undrafted.
• Terrence Brown has the best track record of anybody who’ll be playing basketball in Chapel Hill this winter, coming off a 20 point-per-game season at Utah. He’s an explosive scoring guard who gets to the basket and foul line with regularity, and the question about him is just going to be efficiency. At Utah, his shooting percentage at basically every level of the floor was below what you’d like to see — 56% at the rim, 36% in the midrange, and 32% from 3. Some of that was certainly the amount of scoring load he was taking on with a subpar supporting cast; we saw similar things with Harrison Ingram a few years ago. How much that was the case, and how much Malone has been able to improve that supporting cast, is going to go a long way not just in determining if Brown can be a late first-early second round pick, but in how well the Heels’ season goes.

Baseball

Obviously, other than the draftees themselves, the big news coming out of the MLB Draft for UNC was that Gavin Gallaher was not selected and will be returning to UNC for his senior season. He’s not the only draftable player from this year’s roster who will be returning, which gives the Heels more lineup stability than they had this time last year.

• Second baseman Gavin Gallaher didn’t have the draft year he would have hoped, seeing his contact and power numbers dip from his sophomore year. He was a Gold Glove second baseman in his first year playing the position in college, which helps his pro outlook, but it’s his bat that’s going to make him money at the next level, and he’s going to have to put together a full season at the plate, not just a clutch one, to make his case for pro ball. He’s clearly capable, given how consistent his late-season surges have been, but he’s running out of time to make it happen.
• The version of Erik Paulsen that started the season and finished the season, I think, would certainly have been drafted this year. At his best, the first baseman is hard to strike out and flashes power potential beyond the 7 home runs he hit this season, including a few on pitches that had no right being put over the fence. A serious mid-season slump, punctuated but not entirely caused by a hand injury, put a dent in his year, so again, it’s just about putting together a full season at his best. And I know first base defense isn’t really a needle-mover, but watching Paulsen play first is just different from watching most other guys. Obviously, with both Gallaher and Paulsen being seniors, they’re not going to be taken all that high.
• The early front-runner to be UNC’s first returner taken in the 2027 draft is pitcher Walker McDuffie. After an impressive freshman year, McDuffie dazzled as a high-leverage reliever as a sophomore, finding a little bit more consistency with his fastball and flashing a changeup to lefties that worked well down the stretch of the regular season, to go with the slider as his money pitch. His postseason went a little sour, but the stuff is clearly there, whether he’s going to retain his role or graduate to starter in 2027. Baseball America currently has him as the 74th-ranked college prospect for next year, which would put him in the 3rd-4th round.
• I don’t have as much information about UNC’s incoming transfers, so I’ll quick-hit them here: shortstop Jamie Laskofski and outfielder CJ Egrie seem to have a decent chance to replicate what we saw from Jake Schaffner and Owen Hull this year, though it’d be asking a lot for them to have seasons as good as those two (This isn’t the article for it, but both of them had offensive years that rank among the best in recent UNC history). Laskofski could be a Day 1 pick, while Egrie, as a senior, would probably have a ceiling in the Anthony Donofrio range, in the 8th-11th rounds. And I don’t think it’s out of the question that Coastal Carolina transfer Scott Doran turns himself into a prospect, either; some of those underlying numbers look pretty tasty.