{"id":486887,"date":"2026-03-06T21:53:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T20:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=486887"},"modified":"2026-03-06T21:53:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T20:53:59","slug":"north-carolinas-caleb-wilson-out-for-the-season-after-right-thumb-surgery-following-practice-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/north-carolinas-caleb-wilson-out-for-the-season-after-right-thumb-surgery-following-practice-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina\u2019s Caleb Wilson out for the season after right thumb surgery following practice injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"1937\" data-end=\"2257\"><strong data-start=\"1937\" data-end=\"1955\">North Carolina<\/strong> will be without freshman star <strong data-start=\"1986\" data-end=\"2002\">Caleb Wilson<\/strong> for the rest of the season after he <strong data-start=\"2039\" data-end=\"2068\">fractured his right thumb<\/strong> while dunking during Thursday\u2019s practice. The school announced the injury Friday, and sources told ESPN that Wilson has <strong data-start=\"2189\" data-end=\"2218\">already undergone surgery<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2259\" data-end=\"2521\">The setback compounds an already difficult stretch: Wilson had missed the previous <strong data-start=\"2342\" data-end=\"2355\">six games<\/strong> with a fractured <strong data-start=\"2373\" data-end=\"2386\">left hand<\/strong> suffered on <strong data-start=\"2399\" data-end=\"2410\">Feb. 10<\/strong> at Miami and was considered close to returning before Thursday\u2019s injury.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2523\" data-end=\"2791\">Wilson was averaging <strong data-start=\"2544\" data-end=\"2559\">19.8 points<\/strong> and <strong data-start=\"2564\" data-end=\"2580\">9.4 rebounds<\/strong>, and UNC went <strong data-start=\"2595\" data-end=\"2602\">5-1<\/strong> without him. The Tar Heels are locked into the <strong data-start=\"2650\" data-end=\"2664\">No. 4 seed<\/strong> for next week\u2019s ACC tournament and finish the regular season Saturday at <strong data-start=\"2738\" data-end=\"2752\">No. 1 Duke<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2793\" data-end=\"2955\">Wilson is expected to be cleared in time for the <strong data-start=\"2842\" data-end=\"2859\">NBA pre-draft<\/strong> process, where he projects as a potential <strong data-start=\"2902\" data-end=\"2916\">top-5 pick<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2957\" data-end=\"3107\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The freshman fractured his thumb while dunking in Thursday\u2019s practice and has already had surgery, per ESPN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":430012,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[401],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[179],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-486887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaa","typology-injury"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/02\/University-North-Carolina.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486887"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=486887"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=486887"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=486887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}