North Carolina women’s basketball coach Sylvia Hatchell remembers when a seventh-grader named Ivory Latta caught her eye at a UNC summer basketball camp.
Hatchell said she felt Latta was destined for UNC stardom the first day she came to campus.
“I just fell in love with her, and she fell in love with us — and Carolina,” Hatchell said.
And Latta, UNC’s all-time leading scorer, will return to the Tar Heel basketball scene next season, joining her college coach on the sidelines as an assistant for the women’s team.
Hatchell said Latta was her first choice to fill the vacant slot, once former assistant coach Trisha Stafford-Odom took the head coaching job at Concordia-Irvine.
“I told Ivory, ‘Next time I have an opening, you’ll be the first one I talk to,’” she said.
Latta said she and her former coach have always had a close player-coach rapport, one that has stretched well beyond the scope of college play.
“We talk two, three times a week — even when I’m overseas (playing),” Latta said.
Latta will be coming to help coach a talented but young team that lost three seniors and has room for improvement, Hatchell said.
With a recruiting class of four All-American freshmen, expectations will be high — but injuries and inexperience could stand in the squad’s way.