Heel Tough Blog: What's The Case to Fire Hubert Davis

University of North Carolina Athletics

If you don’t know by now, the Tar Heels' season came to a close in dramatic fashion on Thursday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, as the Tar Heels blew the largest lead in the first round of the Big Dance, squandering away a 19-point lead, losing to VCU in overtime. It marked the first time in UNC history that the Tar Heels were eliminated in the first round in back-to-back years, and it served as the first time in 56 years that Carolina lost three straight games to end the season. That is not the way Hubert Davis wanted or needed the season to end, with his job squarely on the line entering the 2025-26 season. 

Last night, I made the case for Hubert Davis to return as UNC’s head coach next season. It’s only fair that I make the case for UNC to move on from one of the most beloved members in the Carolina Family. As the situation is trending towards moving off Hubert Davis, here is why that decision makes sense, and is best for Carolina Basketball moving forward: 

• Collapses on the Big Stage:

  • Hubert Davis has guided the Tar Heels to four NCAA Tournaments in his five seasons, but the program has suffered two of the worst losses in the history of the Big Dance. At halftime of the 2022 national championship game, the Tar Heels led Kansas 40-25 and were on their way to a 7th NCAA Tournament title. Instead, they lost to Kansas 72-69, as they blew the largest halftime lead in the history of the national championship game. Fast forward to Thursday, and the Tar Heels blew the largest lead in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, meaning in just four tournament appearances, UNC has suffered two of the worst losses in the 87-year history of the event. That doesn’t even take into account the 25-point lead that UNC let get away against Baylor in the second round back in 2022, before going on to win that game, on their way to the Final Four. It’s safe to say that if those results had played out differently, we wouldn’t be having the conversation we are having today. 

• Lack of Player Development: 

  • Sure, Armando Bacot and RJ Davis set and broke numerous records during their UNC careers, but that was more about them taking advantage of the Covid-year, giving them 5 years of college eligibility, as compared to the usual four years of eligibility. There have been numerous five-star players to commit to UNC during Davis’s tenure as head coach, but none have been developed, outside of Caleb Wilson, who will declare for the NBA Draft later this offseason. Drake Powell was a one-and-done last year, but left for the NBA so he could be developed the way he had hoped to be developed at Carolina. Other high-profile prospects, including Caleb Love, Elliot Cadeau, Ian Jackson, and others, opted to transfer out of Carolina after not getting the development they had hoped for. That doesn’t even include high-end four-star prospects like Tyler Nickel and Jalen Washington, both of whom are enjoying more success at Vanderbilt than they ever had at North Carolina. 

• Misevaluating the Transfer Portal:

  • In this day and age, you win in college basketball by supplementing your roster with talent and depth through the transfer portal. Hubert Davis may have nailed the additions of Harrison Ingram, Cormac Ryan, and Henri Veesaar, but his list of misses is much longer. Players that Carolina targeted via the portal, that didn’t work out includes the following: Pete Nance, Cade Tyson, and this year alone, Kyan Evans, Jonathan Powell, and international pro, Luka Bogavac. Now, you could argue that not having a GM in place played a role in the misses in the transfer portal, but nonetheless, it’s hard to accept UNC bringing players into their program, and they do not perform to the level of the previous stop, or where they’d later transfer to after their time at UNC. The miss on Kyan Evans this cycle was critical because it held back the roster, which included two dominant bigs. 

• Coaching Staff: 

  • When Hubert Davis was hired, he let go of longtime assistant Steve Robinson and filled his bench with former UNC players, mandating that to coach at UNC, you have to have played at North Carolina. That means that every assistant is indoctrinated into the Carolina Way of thinking, which is why we see them struggle to make adjustments during the course of a game or during the season, because they all think about the game the same way. Even Dean Smith and Roy Williams’s staffs changed over the years, bringing in different thoughts and ideas. When you look at the lack of player development, the staff is to blame for that, especially Sean May, who has yet to develop a big man during his time on the UNC bench. Loyalty cost Mack Brown his job with UNC football, and it may end up costing Hubert Davis his job with Carolina Basketball.

• Quad 1 Struggles:

  • In this era of the sport, you measure how good your program is by seeing how they fare in Quad 1 games, a metric that helps determine the teams that make the NCAA Tournament field, and how they are seeded. At the end of the regular season, Davis’s record in Quad 1 games was 26-42, which equates to a 38% winning percentage. With losses to Clemson in the ACC Tournament and to VCU in the NCAA Tournament, his record is 26-44. Last year alone, Davis was 1-12 in Quad 1 games, as Carolina started the season preseason ranked #9, and ended the season as the last team selected to the NCAA Tournament, before losing in the first round. In the 2022-23 season, when Carolina started the season preseason ranked #1, and they missed the Big Dance, Carolina was 1-9 in Quad 1 games. That record would suggest that Carolina isn’t an elite program, and isn’t capable of winning the type of games, or the volume of games, that a program like UNC should be winning. His best season was in 2023-24, when Carolina went 10-4. That’s the only year that Davis has posted a winning record in Quad 1 games. 

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