UNC’s Henri Veesaar Sought Out Seth Trimble, Caleb Love in Transfer Process

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Along with the meaningful insider scouting report on North Carolina’s basketball program that Henri Veesaar picked up from former teammate Caleb Love, the big man also was intentional in identifying Seth Trimble as another particularly important piece in his transfer decision to join coach Hubert Davis and the Tar Heels.

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Veesaar said Wednesday afternoon he made it a point during his portal process to study video clips of certain moments that have put Trimble’s skills on display at UNC, in addition to spending quality time with the bouncy veteran guard when he visited Chapel Hill in the spring.

“Seth was very key for it,” Veesaar said at the Smith Center. “He was one of the returning guards, and I kind of just talked to him on my visit. To kind of see where he was at and how he saw Chapel Hill, and kind of seeing what role he’s going to have next year, and what he wanted to be. And talking to Coach Davis about it, too, because I definitely watched a couple of tapes of Seth playing. Obviously I had seen a couple of games of his, but I wanted to see more of it.

“The way he (drives) downhill, I think we’re going to complement each other so great. I’m going to be able to pop (on ball screens). He’s going to have more room to go downhill. He’s an amazing passer off the pick-and-rolls. He sees the pocket pass really good, we have all summer worked on it. He’s very good at seeing lobs late. And the bigs (on defense) have to respect his athleticism, because he’s a freak athlete. He can dunk on anybody if they’re 7-foot or not. So they have to make a decision early. So that opens up the passes late.”

Potential on-the-court sequences such as those, with the skilled 7-footer Veesaar screening and rolling while guards Kyan Evans or Luka Bogavac or Trimble survey and attack, could prove especially profitable for the new-look Tar Heels across the course of the 2025-26 college basketball season.

Veesaar is the frontcourt cornerstone for UNC’s overhauled roster that includes five other additions through the NCAA transfer portal (Evans, Ivan Matlekovic, Jonathan Powell, Jarin Stevenson, Jaydon Young), three freshman recruits (Isaiah Denis, Derek Dixon, Caleb Wilson), and an international import (Bogavac) with four seasons of professional experience in European leagues.

Davis, general manager Jim Tanner and the UNC basketball staff clearly were purposeful in their targeting of Veesaar, who spent the last three seasons at Arizona. Four days after Arizona’s season-ending loss to Duke in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA Tournament, Veesaar officially entered the transfer portal on March 31. He immediately scheduled a recruiting visit and traveled across the country to Carolina the next day. And UNC became the only school he visited, before committing to the Tar Heels on April 4.

“Obviously my goal is to get to the NBA,” Veesaar said Wednesday, “and having all these coaches that have been in the NBA level, coached at the NBA level, they’re all great minds. They kind of know what you need to do. And just seeing the campus, seeing the fans here, it just felt different. The whole city felt like a great place to be. It’s just an amazing place to play basketball at.”

Veesaar played in all 37 games for Arizona last season, and supplied 9.4 points, 5 rebounds and 1.1 blocked shots in just 20.8 minutes of playing time per game. Those averages ticked up to 10.9 points, 5.4 rebounds and 1.5 blocked shots per game in Big 12 Conference games. Some analysts believe Veesaar could be capable of delivering a leap in production at UNC, given the efficiency numbers he compiled.

Last season, he ranked second in Big 12 league play in 2-point field goal percentage (70 percent), seventh in blocked shot rate (7.3 percent) and eighth in offensive rebounding rate (12.2 percent), per Ken Pomeroy’s college basketball database. Veesaar also stepped out and sank 16 successful 3-pointers on the season as a whole, while shooting 59.2 percent from the field overall across all games.

Veesaar played alongside the high-scoring Love at Arizona throughout the last two seasons. He said Love, who of course spent three polarizing seasons at UNC from 2020-23, “had a lot of influence” in his decision to join the Tar Heels as a transfer.

“I’m very close with Caleb from last year,” Veesaar said. “I kind of asked him what he thought about this program, and how his relationships were with the coaches and how he saw me fit into this program. And everything he said checked all the boxes for me. He said it was a great place to be here. They’re definitely going to push me. You’re going to get better here. And I would say that’s all I could ask for.”