There are few buzzwords more common in college athletics nowadays than alignment. It is what every program desires, but few manage to achieve.
At North Carolina, alignment is in short supply. The athletic director is being replaced by a college athletics outsider in a few months. The board chairman, who pushed to hire football coach Bill Belichick, to rather disastrous results last season, resigned last month. Two highly paid general managers have receded to the background. Discussions regarding renovating basketball’s Dean Smith Center on campus or moving to a new building further away from students have split campus opinion and led to protests.
This administrative chaos could work to Tar Heels basketball coach Hubert Davis’s benefit.
Because in the next six weeks or so, a decision will need to be made whether to roll Davis’s tenure over to another season despite lacking results.
Normally, when a coach is on the hot seat, it’s easy for an athletic director to say they’ll wait until the end of the season for proper evaluation. In Davis’s case, it could cloud things even more. North Carolina is dealing with injuries to its two leading scorers, which portends trouble in the wake of Tuesday’s blowout, 82–58 loss to rival NC State.
Big man Henri Veesaar was ruled out with a lower extremity injury about an hour before tip-off, and his return remains unknown. Future NBA draft lottery pick Caleb Wilson is dealing with a broken hand suffered last week. He may be more of a hindrance if he plays with his off hand in a few weeks—as he has hinted at online and during warmups.
It was already going to be a difficult conversation around Davis this offseason. He carries the seal of approval from legendary former head coach Roy Williams, who remains a mainstay at major games and behind the scenes. Plus, Davis has a national title game appearance, memorably dispatching Tobacco Road nemesis Duke twice in March during Mike Krzyzewski’s swan song.
But Davis has also severely underperformed despite having plenty of resources to build a talented roster. He’s gotten twice as many extensions (two) as ACC titles (one) and has barely made a dent in the NCAA tournament beyond that surprising first-year run. He’s also failed to take advantage of a down conference the past few years and missed the NCAA tournament entirely with the preseason No. 1 team in 2023.
NC State forward Ven-Allen Lubin drives the ball to the basket against North Carolina forward Zayden High. | Zachary Taft-Imagn Images
Worse, in-game adjustments and player development have not exactly been strong suits for someone who is an excellent communicator and good recruiter, but still has far less experience for one of the top jobs in the country. In an environment where Kansas State is willing to potentially pay up the largest buyout in hoops history to get rid of its underperforming coach, that’s not exactly a great spot for Davis.
On Tuesday, former Tar Heel turned NC State starter Ven-Allen Lubin nearly outscored every member of his old team with 12 points and chipped in six rebounds before the game got out of hand. A few hundred miles west, another ex-North Carolina starter was fantastic for newly enshrined No. 1 Michigan as Elliot Cadeau poured in 17 points to help the Wolverines thump Purdue in the frenzied confines of Mackey Arena.
That’s a couple of player-led insults added to the injuries. Though even Wilson being at full strength may not have made much of a difference. The Heels were down 42–26 at halftime despite the Wolfpack missing three players during the first 10 minutes with various injuries (Darrion Williams took a particularly brutal fall that required stitches in the locker room) and began the game shooting an atrocious 1 of 17 from beyond the arc.
North Carolina eventually trailed by its largest deficit of the season (23 points), never came within single digits in the second half and allowed coach Will Wade and the Wolfpack to notch their biggest win in the series since 1962. There are few things boosters dislike more than that.
At a place where Michael Jordan famously proclaimed the ceiling—full of national title banners—is the roof when it comes to expectations, North Carolina instead looks like it will be ideal program to pick for an early exit in March Madness brackets and not the title contender many thought they could be at the start of the season. While injuries have no doubt lowered the bar on what this group is capable of, the signs were there long before NC State bludgeoned them Tuesday that this looked like yet another lost year.
Had a last-second three against Duke a few weeks ago not fallen, the chatter around Davis’s tenure and unmet expectations probably would have reached a crescendo long before an 8–5 ACC mark with all five losses to unranked teams on the road.
The good news for Davis getting another crack to fix this flawed roster and restore North Carolina to its proper place is that such issues may not matter by the time the season is over.
While every other coach in America may be crying out for more NIL funds and hoping for more alignment with their administration, Davis may rightfully claim to benefit from injuries and any chaos going on above his head when it comes to deciding whether or not he remains on the job next season.
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