The headline is misleading, for what it's worth. Maryland's not close to being in "all eggs in one basket" mode just yet, not least because we're something like 16 months away from the end of the 2013 recruiting season. But it was catchy.
Anyway, highly-regard 2013 D.C. point guard Nate Britt, in a surprise to absolutely no one, verballed to UNC earlier tonight. (In fact, he did it at half time of the Maryland-Illinois game, which elicited a few rather-tasteless "Nate Britt sucks" chants from some at Comcast Center.) Some, like Dave Telep, had considered Nate Britt a litmus test recruit for Mark Turgeon and his new staff, what with the fact that he's local and the connections Dalonte Hill has with Britt and the entire D.C. Assault program. Surely, those people will be nonplussed with the announcement.
That might be a bit overstating his importance, though, especially because he's not even the best point guard seriously considering Maryland right now. That honor goes to Andrew Harrison, the consensus best point guard in the country, and in some manner includes his brother, shooting guard Aaron. Both of the two, in fact, are ranked above Britt by each of the three big recruiting services. Maryland has strong connections to the two - their grandparents are from Baltimore, they play for an Under Armour-sponsored AAU team, and 2012 Terrapin commitment Shaquille Cleare is a teammate of theirs - and, frankly, there are a lot of things pointing Mark Turgeon's way here. So much so that I feel some modicum of confidence.
Without a doubt, though, there's some tough competition, not the least of which include guys like John Calipari at Kentucky and Sean Miller at Arizona, arguably the two best recruiters in the nation. That's part of the reason landing a guy like Britt would've been so nice - one in the hand worth two in the bush (literally) and what-not.
But there's still plenty of time between now and April 2013, and prospects will come and go at a high rate, guaranteed. Maryland's already hosted Philly point guard and top-50 prospect Rysheed Jordan, and there are some under-the-radar locals, like scoring-machine combo Kam Williams out of Baltimore and Roddy Peters out of the D.C. area, who attended Maryland Madness.
In other words, don't panic. It would've been nice to wrap up a five-star so quickly, but there's a lot of game still to be played.