Coming into this season, everything looked pretty bright for the North Carolina Tar Heels women’s basketball team. Coming off a couple good seasons previously, Carolina brought a bunch of key players, like Deja Kelly and Alyssa Utsby, back and were enrolling some intriguing players, both via transfers and high school recruits. Courtney Banghart’s team had an AP preseason ranking of #16, and it didn’t seem unreasonable that they could end up hosting NCAA Tournament games and be fringe Final Four contenders.
The hits started coming before the season when it was announced that a pair of those recruits — Ciera Toomey and Laila Hull — would sit out and redshirt the 2023-24 season to deal with nagging injuries that they had suffered during their high school careers.