Why it’s time for UNC basketball to go outside ‘family’ to replace Hubert Davis
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UNC and head coach Hubert Davis, who directed team for past 5 seasons, have parted ways.
- It’s time for UNC to hire coach from outside the Tar Heel “family,” widening search pool.
- Davis’s best year was his first. In last two years, UNC has bowed out in NCAA round of 64.
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UNC basketball coach search
UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis coached the Tar Heels for five seasons but was let go after they were defeated in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament. On April 7, the university hired former NBA coach Michael Malone. Here’s ongoing coverage of North Carolina’s coaching transition.
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Hubert Davis is a nice guy. Let’s stipulate that, first and foremost.
But Hubert Davis was ultimately not the right guy to lead the UNC basketball program. He didn’t meet UNC’s standard of success — which is incredibly high, yes, but also means that you get just about all the resources you could ever need or want.
UNC men’s basketball is not just one of the best brand names in college sports, but in all of sports. Blowing a 19-point lead in the second half to VCU — the largest comeback in the NCAA Tournament since 2018 — is the sort of high-profile loss that can do very bad things to your career.
So what do the Tar Heels do next after their administration ousted Davis Tuesday night? I won’t pretend to know who they are going to hire, but I do know one thing:
They must look outside the family.
UNC coaching tree is thinning
The past four UNC head coaches in a row — Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty, Roy Williams and Davis — all were branches that sprang directly from the Dean Smith coaching tree. That was fine, as far as it went. But now it’s time to widen the field.
You don’t have to have gone to college in Chapel Hill to understand the place. It helps, sure. I get it. I graduated from there and covered the first game in the Smith Center as a student. I’m steeped in the mythology of it.
Now, though, it’s far more important to understand NIL, the transfer portal and the delicate dance about how to replace or renovate the 40-year-old Smith Center.
You don’t have to boast a degree trimmed in baby blue to do that, or to have made the uphill run from South Campus to Franklin Street after a big win, or to have lived in Old East or Hinton James, or to have taken your graduation pictures in front of the Old Well.
You just need to be a great basketball coach. You just need to beat Duke. You just need to get out of the NCAA Tournament’s first weekend, at a minimum, every year.
Davis wanted to stay, incidentally. He made that clear in a statement he released late Tuesday night via social media, where he said: “Tonight, I was let go by the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. My desire was to continue to coach here.” And, later: “My goal is to coach again in the very near future.”
But UNC’s administration made the decision to move on, and now an even bigger decision looms.
Let’s think for a moment about the last time UNC went outside the family to hire a basketball head coach. He grew up in a small town in Kansas. He went to the University of Kansas. His big break came when the Tar Heels hired him — a guy with direct connections to Air Force and Kansas, but not so much to UNC — to be an obscure assistant coach. He got promoted three years later, to head coach, when the head coach who hired him got enmeshed in a scandal.
His name was Dean Smith.
That was in 1961. And after Frank McGuire departed, for the next 65 years it was Dean, and then Guthridge, who went to Kansas State but had been in Chapel Hill so long by then he might as well have lived inside the Bell Tower. Then came Doherty, Williams and Davis — an assistant coach under Williams, and ol’ Roy’s handpicked successor.
Those past three head coaches all went to UNC and were all embedded inside the Tar Heel traditions. And still, it only really worked out for one of the last three. Williams won three national championships and was absolutely as good as it gets. Doherty was mostly a disaster. Davis lasted five years.
Now, though, to look only at coaches with UNC already on their resume would be silly. The Tar Heel pipeline isn’t exactly bulging with the kind of coach the UNC job could attract. The post is arguably the best in college basketball — although Duke, Kansas and Kentucky could make a case — and could lure a coach who has won a national championship or two already. Or an NBA title. Or one who ranks as the top up-and-comer in the country.
Carolina blue ... and green
Before we go too far into what’s next, though, a few more words about Davis.
His first season was remarkable, with the double wins against Duke the twin highlights of his coaching career — although a loss to Kansas in the national championship after holding a big lead was jarringly similar in spirit to Thursday’s shocker of a loss to VCU. Still, comparing the first season of Hubert Davis to that of UNC head football coach Bill Belichick is like comparing the NFL rookie years of Cam Newton and Jimmy Clausen.
The past four years of UNC basketball, though, have evoked varying shades of disappointment. I haven’t talked to a happy UNC basketball fan in a month.
In those four seasons, UNC either didn’t make the NCAA Tournament at all after being a favorite to win the national championship (2023), earned a No. 1 seed but got upset in the round of 16 (2024) or exited in the first round (2025, 2026). Tyler Hansbrough, UNC’s all-time leading scorer, growled in an interview after the VCU loss that the Tar Heels “never step on anybody’s throat.”
Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, this is the first time UNC has lost in the round of 64 in consecutive tournaments. It also didn’t do Davis any favors when VCU, fresh off of vanquishing UNC, immediately lost by 21 points in the very next round, to Illinois.
It used to be that the round of 32 (certainly) and the round of 16 (most of the time) was a given for the Tar Heels, with a Final Four sprinkled in every 3-4 years. This is a program, after all, that has won six national championships and boasts the most victories (134) and Final Four appearances (31) in NCAA tourney history. Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Dean, Roy, Hansbrough, Charlie Scott, Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Lennie Rosenbluth — the tradition just goes on and on.
Here’s one of the biggest problems: Because players are now paid — the most highly-touted ones in the millions — it’s more expensive to run a high-level program than ever before.
You know what excites high-dollar donors?
Change. A new coach. A fresh start.
Do you know what doesn’t excite them?
A coach who had one great year and has spent the past four trying to recapture the magic. A coach who lost his last three games of the past season. A coach whose team too often looked discombobulated in the biggest moments, sometimes failing to get the ball inbounds or even get off a shot when it mattered most (see: VCU).
Another significant issue for UNC: Duke.
If the Blue Devils weren’t eight miles away and in contention for a national title every year — they have made the Sweet 16 again, of course — the seat in Chapel Hill wouldn’t be so hot. But it is, and they are, and they also seem to employ the best single player in America (Zion Williamson, Cooper Flagg, Cameron Boozer) over and over.
Time for a change
Davis also didn’t help himself in his postgame news conference after the VCU game, clips of which have been replayed endlessly. Normally expansive in press conferences, he was abrupt and defensive. Davis did himself no favors with anyone with that performance, which anyone with an extensive TV background (which Davis has) should have known would play poorly on a nationwide scale.
A sampling:
Q: Did you sense your team got a little tired there?
A: I did not. I didn’t.
Q: Why did you go to just a six-man rotation in the second half?
A: Because that was my decision.
Q: Generally, what do you think went wrong?
A: What do you mean?
That last question was mine. And to be fair, after I elaborated a little, Davis answered it a few seconds later with a longer quote that boiled down to: “Sometimes the ball doesn’t go in.”
It’s true that sometimes it doesn’t. It’s true that All-American Caleb Wilson was hurt for the final month of the season, and if he hadn’t gotten hurt, Davis may well have still been UNC’s coach in the fall.
But it’s also true that by UNC’s standards, this result simply wasn’t enough. And the loss seemed to unleash some hidden resentments, some wolves that had been biding their time deep in the woods but were now baying at the door.
It was time for a change.
And now it’s time to widen the field to all 64 colors in the Crayola box, and not just use the one that says, “Carolina Blue.”
This story was originally published March 24, 2026 at 9:07 PM with the headline "Why it’s time for UNC basketball to go outside ‘family’ to replace Hubert Davis."
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