Why UNC basketball’s win over Kansas is validation for Heels coach Hubert Davis

Hubert Davis has long prided himself on a singular approach to games. The biggest matchup is the next one. Every game is the Super Bowl. And on and on.

But inevitably, some games — some matchups — carry more weight than others. And when the two teams are Kansas and North Carolina, the original powerhouses of men’s college basketball, how could it not mean more?

Maybe that’s why Davis, after UNC’s Thursday practice, made a point of visiting Roy Williams. This wasn’t a quick check-in. Davis made the 75-minute drive over to Pinehurst, where his former coach and mentor now lives. Williams, still recovering from knee surgery, hadn’t been able to attend UNC’s early-season games. But he’d been keeping up with the Tar Heels.

They sat and talked through everything: the matchup, the players, the preparation. Williams asked about each one. How’s Henri doing? How’s Caleb?

And on Friday night, with Williams back in the Smith Center, Davis coached No. 25 North Carolina to a definitive 87–74 victory over No. 19 Kansas — the first-ever meeting between the two programs in Chapel Hill. It came just two games into what’s shaping up to be the most important season of Davis’ coaching career — one that could help define both his future and the direction of a program determined to remain among college basketball’s elite.

A win like this doesn’t make a season, just as a loss wouldn’t have doomed it. But for Davis, in a year already heavy with scrutiny and opportunity, Friday felt like an early sign that belief is returning — inside the locker room and out. That North Carolina was back to being North Carolina.

“The number one thing for me is I wanted this new team, this new group, to have evidence of what it’s like to play in a game like this in the Smith Center — to come up big,” Davis said. “I just wanted them to have a taste of what it’s like to be here.”

Hubert Davis’ history with Kansas

For Davis, his “taste” of matchups against Kansas has been bitter. There was the loss last year, of course, and the one in the 2022 national title game. Davis also lost to Kansas in his first year as an assistant coach. But his history with the Jayhawks stretches back even further.

In the 1991 Final Four, Dean Smith — as much a father figure to Davis as a coach — was ejected late in a 79–73 Kansas victory. It was an almost unimaginable scene: one of the most gentlemanly coaches in basketball tossed after his second technical foul with just 35 seconds left.

For Davis, a junior guard on that team, the loss stung deeply. He arrived in Indianapolis with visions of cutting down nets. Instead, he left with a scarring memory — one he chose to relive, year after year. Until 2017, he said, he rewatched that game annually, as if reliving the pain had a purpose.

“It would make me cry,” Davis said in 2022. “And I was hoping that... it’s interesting, every time I watched it, I would think, it’s going to turn out differently.”

On Friday night, it finally did.

Tar Heels started slowly

Not without some drama, though. The Tar Heels fell behind by double digits late in the first half as Kansas capitalized on 10 UNC turnovers — “almost like pick-sixes for us,” Davis said. The Jayhawks scored 17 points off those miscues and held most of the Tar Heels to an abysmal start.

Henri Veesaar and Caleb Wilson combined for 22 of UNC’s 29 first-half points. The rest of the team? Seven points on 2-of-20 shooting.

You could almost hear the keyboards clacking — the same online critics who’d spent the offseason debating Davis’ portal moves readying their takes. Where were the shooters? The size? How could the Tar Heels still look overwhelmed against ranked opponents, just as they did a year ago when they lost eight of nine games against AP Top 25 teams, including Kansas?

And yet, the halftime locker room was “super positive,” transfer guard Kyan Evans said. The team knew what they had to fix, and did so. The Tar Heels shot 66.7% after halftime, dropping 58 second-half points on Kansas — the second-most points scored in any half against the Jayhawks in Bill Self’s 22 (and counting) seasons in Lawrence.

A year ago, at Allen Fieldhouse, UNC’s early performance against Kansas left Davis emotional at the break, pleading for more fire. “We’ve got to play with emotion,” Seth Trimble recalled him saying then, in the eventual 92-89 loss.

This time, emotion wasn’t the issue.

“The great thing about this team is every single guy has a motor,” Trimble said. “Every single guy is willing to sell out, and every single guy is willing to make that winning play. And I think we saw that tonight. That’s the biggest difference.”

‘That’s why we’re here’

No one embodied it more than Wilson. The freshman forward fidgeted during the national anthem, restless, waiting for the game to start and the valve to release on all the energy he’d built up at practice this week, when he wore a look so serious that Davis had to ask the young phenom if everything was OK. “Coach, I’m just really locked in,” Wilson told him.

And he was. That much was clear when Wilson opened the Tar Heels’ scoring with a soaring putback dunk. He never slowed down, finishing with 24 points, seven rebounds, four assists and four steals. But beyond the numbers was how he played — and that might’ve mattered even more. He dove on the floor for loose balls, directed teammates on defense. Perhaps the most animated he became all night — and the bar was pretty high — was when he helped forced a 10-second backcourt violation early in the first half. He roared, flexing his arms and stalking the hardwood to the delight of the home crowd before finding Trimble to celebrate.

“That’s why we’re here,” his father, Jerry Wilson, told the N&O after the game, speaking of the atmosphere on Friday. “That’s why we decided to come here. Because we wanted these type of situations, these type of games. All the lights on.”

His son agreed, but saw it a bit differently.

“They beat us in the [2022] national championship and Coach Davis was emotional about that,” Caleb Wilson said. “So I wanted to impress my coach. I wanted to impress the world.”

So when Wilson noticed what he felt was a “nonchalant” effort from Kansas in warmups — laying the ball in instead of dunking, certainly not displaying the emotion his coach would expect — he filed it away.

“That pissed me off,” he said, tapping his chest. “Like Michael Jordan said, ‘I took that personal.’”

Trimble took it personally, too. The returning senior took on the toughest defensive assignment — hounding Kansas’ star freshman Darryn Peterson — and scored 13 of his 17 points after halftime. Trimble’s approach to Peterson was informed by Davis, who decided to change things up and stick with more traditional ball screen coverage rather than switch. It worked. After the game, Self said Trimble blanketed Peterson “in a way that, to me, was terrific.”

Self also praised the play of Veesaar, who gave UNC a steadying presence inside. Veesaar, a key portal pickup for Davis, finished with 20 points while outplaying Kansas center Flory Bidunga. Evans, who Davis added in the offseason for his shooting ability and playmaking accumen, found his touch late for 12 second-half points and two triples. Jonathan Powell and Luka Bogavac — who came to Chapel Hill by way of West Virginia and Montenegro, respectively — each knocked down three-pointers after halftime, putting smiles on their faces and further riling up the home crowd.

By the final minutes, UNC’s toughness — the trait Davis preaches most — had flipped the game entirely. A blistering second half, a storm of energy and emotion, sent the Dean Dome into a frenzy.

“It validates [Davis’] thoughts and the vision that he had,” Trimble said. “It takes some early stress off of him, getting a big win like that. And it gives not only him, but this whole team a bunch of confidence going into the rest of the season.”

Tar Heels — and Davis — celebrate

When the final buzzer sounded — UNC 87, Kansas 74 — the crowd exploded. Students in white jumped and waved. Grown men screamed and hugged. Wilson sprinted toward the stands, arms raised and waving. More. Louder.

After the typical handshake line procession, Elijah Davis, the coach’s son and a senior guard on the team, wrapped his dad in a hug. And just before entering the tunnel and making his way to the locker room, Hubert Davis stopped again. He turned and found Williams in the stands.

Davis threw both arms around him and kissed Williams on the cheek. Williams patted Davis’ shoulder. “Hey,” Williams said, “go in there and show them a dance move.”

Davis did. By the time he emerged later for his postgame news conference, the suit was gone — replaced by warmup gear. In the locker room they’d doused him with water. Laughter, too, spilled everywhere.

Davis said that, when he saw the water bottles at the ready, he thought the celebration was for Wilson.

No, he soon found out, it was for him.

This story was originally published November 8, 2025 at 9:33 AM.