CHARLOTTE — Sayon Keita arrived in Chapel Hill on a Saturday night in August, the weekend before classes started. That evening, North Carolina coach Michael Malone and his staff walked the 7-foot freshman center into his dorm, and Malone said the campus was buzzing. The timing was tight. Keita had to clear the visa process at the embassy in Madrid before he could travel, and he reached campus as the semester was about to begin. Malone said he worried about how a teenager would handle the move.
