The UNC men’s basketball team is the talk of college sports right now, thanks to hiring longtime Denver Nuggets boss Michael Malone as head coach.
As the NBA regular season winds down, a former Tar Heel is stealing headlines, due to his career performance for the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night.
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Cormac Ryan, a sharpshooter during North Carolina’s 2023-24 Sweet 16 run, exploded for a career-high 28 points in Milwaukee’s 125-108 win over the Brooklyn Nets.
Ryan drained 10 of his 17 shots, including a 5-of-9 (55.5 percent) mark from deep. Scoring wasn’t the only impressive part of Ryan’s Friday night, as he added five rebounds and dished out three assists.
In each of the Bucks’ past seven games since March 29, Ryan scored in double figures and played double-digit minutes. Ryan previously reached the 20-point mark twice: first in Milwaukee’s 119-113 loss to the Houston Rockets on April Fool’s Day, followed by 21 points in a 131-115 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies.
Tar Heel Nation quickly became used to Friday’s type of production from Ryan, who averaged 11.5 points per game during his lone season in Chapel Hill. Ryan developed into a prominent free throw shooter, leading UNC with an 87.4% mark from the charity stripe, while becoming a 3-point assassin with 75 perimeter makes.
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There’s too many games to count in a college basketball season, but North Carolina will always remember Ryan for his career-high 31 points at Duke, a game the good guys won 84-79.
The Bucks might be out of playoff contention – and they’ll look different in the 2026-27 NBA season. Ryan proved, however, he deserves to become a full-time NBA starter.
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This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: Former Tar Heel Cormac Ryan scores NBA career-high 28 points on Friday