Enrolling at Carolina early and immediately being thrown into Tar Heel practices wasn’t entirely unfamiliar territory for Will Shaver.
The Birmingham native had to choose between going to prep school or graduating from high school and coming to Chapel Hill in January. He chose the latter, correctly reasoning that there was no better place for his development than working out every day with the Tar Heels.
There were some adjustments, of course. As he puts it, “When I showed up, I was supposed to be in senior year of high school math class, so it’s an interesting feeling going from a guy from Birmingham, Alabama, to guarding Armando Bacot in 24 hours.”
But Shaver had experience going against more seasoned players. His father, Chris, was a 6-foot-9 standout at Birmingham Southern and is a member of the school’s Hall of Fame.
That led to some battles in the Shaver family driveway. And while the elder Shaver got the best of most of them when his son was a youngster, things began to change when Will reached his teenage years.
“I think the first time I beat him was in a game of HORSE,” Will says. “I was about 14. That was a huge moment for me. He threw the ball and it went into the woods.”
There were some Tar Heel-like protocols already in place for the youngster, though.
“Yeah,” he says. “I had to go get it.”
So it was familiar to him when he arrived in Chapel Hill and frequently heard that shout of, “Freshman!” any time a ball has to be tracked down during practice. Just this week during a practice water break, Hubert Davis reminded his team, “Freshmen wait one minute,” so the older players could go first.
Those are minor inconveniences, however, when compared to battling with Bacot every single day in the post.
“I slept really well those first few nights,” Shaver says. “It was a hard experience. I was like, ‘What the heck is going on?’…The first couple of months were a struggle. Getting in shape and coming here in midseason was tough. Towards April and May, going into June and July, I started to get my speed up, get up the effort, intensity and…
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