Carolina Legacy Malloy Smith Commits to Tar Heels

Malloy Smith will be the third member of his family to wear the North Carolina Basketball uniform. The 6-foot-6 senior guard at Santa Ana (Calif.) Mater Dei committed to the Tar Heels on Friday. Appropriately, he announced the decision on his father Kenny Smith’s NBA Tip-Off show on ESPN.

“I’ve done a lot of praying and taken a lot of time in my recruitment, and I think the best thing for me to do is to join the Carolina family,” he said on the show.

Malloy Smith averaged 8.6 points, 4.3 rebounds and 2.5 assists for Mater Dei this season. He had single game season highs of 20 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. Smith is not rated in the Rivals Industry Rankings.

Kenny Smith is a Tar Heel legend who earned First Team All-American honors (1987) before playing a decade in the NBA and then becoming an award-winning studio analyst. Smith’s brother, K.J. was on the UNC roster from 2017-21.

In addition to the Tar Heels, Smith claimed offers from California, Cal State Northridge, and Portland State. He visited Cal in the fall and was in Chapel Hill for an official visit on Feb. 28. There, accompanied by his family, he watched UNC’s 89-82 win over Virginia Tech.

When Malloy Smith received the UNC offer in a phone call with Hubert Davis in February, it was a special father-son moment.

“I came home and Malloy just looks at me and he didn’t say anything,” Kenny Smith told Inside Carolina. “I looked at him and said ‘what’s going on?’ He said, ‘UNC just offered me.’ I high-fived him, I hugged him, and then I said ‘if you don’t take the scholarship, I’m taking it.’”

Malloy Smith becomes the third member of UNC’s 2026 recruiting class, joining five-star guard Dylan Mingo and Top 25 forward Maximo Adams. They will enroll and arrive on campus in June.

“He’s always been a Carolina fan, even in 6th, 7th, or 8th grade, he’d say ‘we lost today’ or ‘we won today’ when he was talking about Carolina,” said Kenny Smith. “And what I told him he was that we (UNC) have had some great players come through our program, with sons who played basketball, and they didn’t all get offered,” Smith continued. “You’re in a unique situation, because we (UNC) don’t just give those scholarships out.”

Malloy is named after his father’s high school. Kenny Smith was a McDonald’s All-American at Queens (N.Y.) Archbishop Molloy.