CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Getting sent to Texas for the opening weekend may not have meant much to most of North Carolina’s roster – the Tar Heels, as a No. 8 seed, were entirely at the mercy of bracketing fate – but it meant everything to Brady Manek.
After a long year out of his comfort zone at UNC, the Oklahoma native finally gets to play a home game.
While Manek grew up in Harrah, outside of Oklahoma City, Fort Worth is only about 90 minutes from where his parents live now on the shores of Lake Texoma, right on the border. When they’ve flown out to see Manek play for North Carolina this year, they’ve driven down to Dallas to do it.
Manek said again Tuesday he came to North Carolina as a graduate transfer to play in big games. For the biggest one yet, he’ll have no shortage of support.
“My parents will get to have an easier trip, finally, this year,” Manek said. “I have a lot of friends. My high school coach. Grandparents. They’re all going to be there. It’s going to be fun. I’m going to have a lot of people there, a lot of people to see me.”
This may have been a different year for Manek, who played four seasons at Oklahoma, less than an hour away, but it’s hardly been a lonely one. It’s always a bit of a lottery how transfers will work out, even with the best of intentions, with all the variables that go into the relationship between new player and new coach and new teammates.
It’s hard to imagine Manek fitting in any better in Chapel Hill, where his coaches and teammates talk about his smooth transition, but it’s easy to imagine things not going so well. Without casting any aspersions on Dawson Garcia, there’s no question the Tar Heels became a more fluid team when the Marquette transfer returned to Minnesota in January to take care of his family.
Without Garcia, more pieces started to click into place for the Tar Heels — less depth but more shots to go around in a lineup with four ball-dominant players — but that was never an issue with Manek.
“The transition has been so good, it feels like Brady has been here for four years,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “To be honest with you, I don’t know that there’s a formula whether it fits or not. It just fits or it doesn’t. The really cool thing is, we knew we only had one year with Brady, and for somebody that’s lived in Oklahoma his whole life, and this is first time living outside of Oklahoma, for him to come here – the guys on the team love him.
“I can’t imagine not coaching him. A year ago I didn’t even know him. We had never spoken. I think it’s unique. You look at the transfers that we’ve gotten in the past, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Cam Johnson, it just worked, for whatever reason. There’s a number of factors. For Brady, it just works. I wish there was some way we could get a COVID-COVID year and bring him back again. He’s been that off the chart. I love that dude to death.”
On the court, as North Carolina prepares to face Marquette on Thursday, Manek has established himself as the Tar Heels’ most accurate and most consistent long-range shooter, even if at 6-9 with his scraggly red beard, he looks like an old-school post player.
“He’s literally like my favorite player,” UNC’s Leaky Black said. “For me, it’s like Coby White and then it’s Brady Manek. Brady Manek is a great player, man. He’s not just a shooter. My thing is, always being a point guard, it’s a detail thing. An IQ kind of thing. Me and Brady just click.”
On North Carolina’s roster, only Manek and Black have the experience of playing in the pre-pandemic NCAA tournament – Manek would actually have played Duke in Pittsburgh in 2018 if Oklahoma had gotten past Rhode Island – and not last March’s weird Indianapolis bubble that everyone seemed to appreciate but nobody seemed to actually enjoy.
This is why Manek came to UNC, to play in games like these, after going 2-3 in the NCAA tournament at Oklahoma and never making it to the second weekend. Winning at Duke was “even better than he thought it would be.” He’d like more.
“I had expectations of winning games and playing in some fun ones,” Manek said. “I think I’m still on that path of playing in fun ones. There’s no better feeling of being in March Madness and being able to play and just experience it. Even better, I get to experience it the way I remember it, with fans and everybody there.”
And in his case, by “everybody,” he does mean everybody.
