How the Hubert Davis era at UNC unofficially began with speech after NCAA loss
Every season during Hubert Davis’ nine years as an assistant coach at North Carolina, Roy Williams would give his final postgame speech in the locker room after the last game then open the floor to his staff to comment.
Each time, Davis declined to speak.
Until Wisconsin.
The Tar Heels’ season ended abruptly last March with an 85-62 loss to the Badgers in the 2021 NCAA Tournament. It was the first and only time a Williams-coached team lost in the first round. That followed a 2019-20 season ended by the COVID-19 pandemic in which the Heels’ 14-19 record marked Williams’ first-ever losing season as a head coach.
Davis couldn’t stay silent about that.
“I wanted to let them know that this wasn’t Carolina,” said Davis, who added that he was upset and frustrated. “It wasn’t Carolina to lose in the first round NCAA tournament. It wasn’t Carolina to lose in that fashion and I wanted guys that were committed to being a part of this program, being a part of this team, and achieving all the team goals that we’ve always wanted to achieve every year.”
Carolina begins the Hubert Davis era 7:30 p.m. Tuesday against Loyola (Md.) in the Dean E. Smith Center. But it unofficially began with that postgame speech in Mackey Arena on Purdue’s campus.
It was as if Williams handed him the proverbial baton before the team walked past the statue of legendary coach John Wooden and headed to the bus after the game. Williams wouldn’t announce his retirement publicly for almost two weeks after the loss, but that moment with the team signaled a change even before anyone else knew it.
“Coach (Williams) probably had already decided he was leaving, but I guess he didn’t really know how to put all that into words at the moment because he was still thinking about losing the game,” junior forward Armando Bacot said. “Coach Davis was more vocal, now looking back at it, because I guess he was already starting his new role as the next coach.”
Williams, knowing he was going to retire shortly after the season, was emotional to the point of not getting all his words out. He didn’t speak too long after thanking the “Iron Five” group of walk-ons and apologized for not getting them more playing time.
Generally, when Williams turned to the assistant coaches, their words were usually brief, if they had anything to say at all after their final game of the season. Steve Robinson, Williams’ longtime assistant on staffs at Kansas and UNC and is now an assistant coach at Arizona, would usually say something. Assistant coach Brad Fredrick had occasionally chimed in, too.
It was a bit out of character for Davis to speak up, which may be why his message was so resounding for the team.
“It was very inspirational because he said, ‘This is not North Carolina basketball,’ ” said former guard K.J. Smith, whose father Kenny Smith was a standout for UNC from 1984-87. “And if you want to come back to North Carolina basketball, this is not going to be the standard. We’re going to set the standard back to what it is, and that’s championship-level basketball.”
Davis played in a Final Four and on teams that won ACC titles. As an assistant, he was there for the 2016 Final Four and the 2017 national championship.
Smith said Davis was known to give a motivational word during the course of the season. This was more of a personal challenge.
Davis wasn’t named head coach until April 6, but he started March 19 when he issued an open invitation that anyone who wasn’t willing to put in the work to elevate the program back to a championship level should leave.
“I wanted guys fully committed, I wanted guys that wanted to be here and want to be a part of this program and this history,” Davis said. “And I was clear and definitive in what I wanted to communicate to them after that Wisconsin game.”
Sophomore guard Caleb Love said he “knew something was up,” when Williams kissed the floor at center court in the Smith Center after their 91-73 win over Duke in the regular-season finale. But only in retrospect did Love realize how Davis set the tone for the offseason before he was even the head coach.
To be clear, it wasn’t a love it or leave it speech. Love said the main point was the team, individually and collectively, had to figure out “who we really are.”
“We had to figure out what we want to do, ‘What’s our why?’ ” Love said. “Once he said that, it was like, everything just clicked ... I just feel like that carried over, and we kind of knew like we’ve got to change.”
The changes will be on full display in the opener. Davis has revamped the offense to reflect more of the spacing and perimeter shooting that is used in the NBA. Davis brought in three transfers, including forwards Dawson Garcia, from Marquette and Brady Manek of Oklahoma, who will be big factors in the rotation. The difference will especially be seen in those post players such as Bacot, who won’t hesitate to take open 3-pointers.
Davis has injected new energy into the program and it has trickled down to the players.
“I like their attention to detail and I like their hunger,” Davis said. “One of the things that I’ve said to a number of people is that they’re playing with a sense of desperation and one of the things that they’re desperate about as they want to be relevant.”
For Davis, there’s a sense of calm that comes from having been in the spotlight before: As a player in the NBA for the New York Knicks, as an analyst on ESPN and on the sidelines as an assistant coach during big games for the past nine years.
He’s not planning to do anything special to mark his first game as head coach. Maybe because his tenure started in earnest the last time Carolina played a game that mattered back in March.
“I think he knew that was his last time as an assistant with Coach Williams and he was stepping into that role,” Bacot said. “So he was emotional that one chapter was closing and another one was beginning.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 8:00 AM.