CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. Marcus Paige understands the legacy he is about to inherit.

Paige's team was coming off two straight losses at the NBA Players Association camp Friday when he was asked about the NBA careers launched by former North Carolina point guards Raymond Felton and Ty Lawson.

Paige, a rising senior from Linn-Mar High in Marion, Iowa, appears set to be the point guard of the future for the Tar Heels. He said the NBA success of Felton and Lawson makes North Carolina more appealing, but it isn't the main reason he was interested in the Tar Heels.

"They also were able to win national championships," Paige said. "I'm really big on winning. I love to win, hate to lose. To see the success they had running that offense and having guys around them that can score, just being leaders and floor generals, there's something definitely appealing to me in that."

Paige, who's listed at 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, is playing against many of the top prospects in the nation at the NBAPA camp this week at the University of Virginia.

He is rated as the 27th-best prospect overall in the Class of 2012 by ESPN.com.

"The best thing about Marcus is he understands what his responsibility is," said Dave Telep, ESPN.com recruiting analyst . "He is a facilitator for other guys, and he picks his offense and his spots. At the end of the day, he's a competitive kid. You want your point guard wired to be a winner, and that's in the DNA of Marcus Paige."

Paige has been a North Carolina fan since he was a young child, when he became a big fan of Vince Carter. He still remembers waiting eagerly to watch Carter in the 2000 NBA slam dunk contest, then being awestruck as Carter won with a mesmerizing series of dunks.

Now Paige likes watching New Orleans Hornets point guard Chris Paul, admiring his ability to perform multiple tasks - scoring, running the offense and defending. But Paige's first basketball influence came from his parents.

Ellis and Sherryl Paige each played small-college basketball at Mount Mercy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Sherryl went on to coach the girls' team at Marion High until Marcus' sister Morgan, a rising sophomore on the team at Wisconsin, left for college.

Marcus likes to work daily on his ball handling and shooting, and his mother often took him with her or gave him the keys to the gym when she was coaching so he could work out.

"They always said if you want to be good at something, whatever it is, you've got to work at it," Marcus Paige said. "So they kind of introduced me to working hard at something I enjoy and doing something I love. I just kind of took it from there."

He said his big break with North Carolina came when coach Roy Williams asked another Tar Heels commitment, J.P. Tokoto, for feedback on point guards in the Class of 2012. Tokoto had played with Paige and put in a good word for him.

Paige got along well with Williams and liked the Tar Heels' fast-paced offense.

North Carolina has Kendall Marshall set to play point guard as a sophomore next season and will have freshman Stilman White backing him up before leaving for a two-year Mormon mission.

Paige is counting on being handed the keys to the Tar Heels offense at some point.

"I think I can flourish in a system that gets up and down," he said, "and as a distributor I can get the ball to guys that can finish on the break. So I'm pretty excited."