Day’Ron Sharpe escaped The Dungeon. Now he may be UNC’s best freshman rebounder ever.
North Carolina freshman Day’Ron Sharpe’s trips to The Dungeon were in reality about as miserable as they sound.
The no-frills gym tucked away behind a church in Greenville is as medieval as a basketball court can be especially during Sharpe’s summertime training.
Two fans and no air conditioning. The temperature inside the gym routinely exceeds 100 degrees during the summer. They don’t have a bunch of amenities like a rebounding net or even room for skill practice on the side. It’s one main court with two goals. Players, as Keith McLawhorn explained, have to want to be there.
“It’s kind of our mission statement when you step in the gym,” McLawhorn, Sharpe’s trainer of nearly 10 years who directs the gym, told the News & Observer. “Go hard or go home. The more Day’Ron came to The Dungeon, the more he understood it and he’s just carried that over to high school and now the college level.”
Especially when it comes to rebounding. Sharpe, a 6-foot-11, 265-pound forward who averages 9.5 points, leads the Tar Heels with 7.8 rebounds per game. He’s fourth overall in the ACC in rebounding, but first among the league’s freshmen.
But let’s not stop there; Sharpe may be the best freshman rebounder in the history of Carolina basketball. That’s a huge claim, but the advanced statistics back Sharpe.
“I never thought about comparing myself or any of that stuff,” Sharpe told the N&O. “I just grew up watching Carolina and I just always wanted to come here. The greatest players came from Carolina to me — you got MJ (Michael Jordan), James Worthy, Vince (Carter), Antawn Jamison — all those guys, so I wanted to be like them.”
Jamison holds the record for highest rebounding average for a freshman with 9.6. He’s followed by Armando Bacot last season, who averaged 8.3. Sharpe is tied for third with Tyler Hansbrough, who also averaged 7.8 boards his first season.
The difference is Sharpe collects so many boards despite only averaging 20 minutes per game. His per-40 minute rebounding average of 15.4 crushes all the Carolina greats as freshmen: Sam Perkins 10.4, Jamison 11.7, Hansbrough 10.3, J.R. Reid 10.4. Kennedy Meeks, who ranks fifth in career rebounds in program history, is the closest to Sharpe with a 14.9 per-40 average.
“His tenacity, his effort to try to get every rebound on the offensive end I think is great,” said UNC senior forward Garrison Brooks. “He’s always wanting to get the ball off the glass because it’s just something he naturally has a talent for.”
Consider this, too, Sharpe has a total rebound percentage of 20.3, which means when he’s on the court, he grabs about one of every five rebounds, according to Sports-reference.com. That metric doesn’t track back quite as far, but Sharpe is the best in the past 30 years at UNC in that category, too.
“Rebounding has always been my calling card,” Sharpe said. “I don’t really know why.”
Sharpe has a knack for finding the ball that UNC coach Roy Williams said is improving. It may have come from always being surrounded with other talent; Sharpe said he had to look for ways to score that didn’t always involve having a play called for him.
“He was a diamond in the rough and I think he still is,” Williams said. “He’s going to get better and better.”
It wasn’t until Sharpe understood his potential that he went hard in The Dungeon. McLawhorn said the dynamic of their training changed from having to schedule Sharpe for workouts to Sharpe calling and asking for more outside of their calendar dates.
They went to a football field and flipped old tractor tires that weighed in excess of 150 pounds. McLawhorn had him doing backpedals up a hill to improve his footwork. And they would return to The Dungeon for on-court skill work.
“Day’Ron understood that it was going to take a lot more work to get him to the next level,” McLawhorn said. “Once I saw his work ethic start to change, that was scary and that was my turning point to believe this kid was special.”
Now Sharpe has made everyone in the ACC know, too.
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 5:07 PM.