In the end, it was an ill-fated dunk attempt that did it.
On March 5, North Carolina freshman forward Caleb Wilson was participating in a practice in hopes he would be able to play at Duke two days later. Wilson had not played since breaking his non-shooting hand during a loss at Miami on Feb. 10. From the moment that injury happened, folks inside the program circled the Duke game as his earliest possible return date.
While attempting a dunk during that practice, however, Wilson broke his right hand. It was a fluke, and a stinging blow. He underwent surgery and ended his season, thus robbing North Carolina of not just its best player, but one of the top players in the country. Without Wilson, the Tar Heels got blown out at Duke 76-61, bowed out to Clemson 80-79 in the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament, blew a second-half 19-point lead to VCU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and ended their season with a devastating 82-78 overtime loss.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that if Wilson were in the lineup, North Carolina’s season would have ended much differently. Alas, the what-if game is unplayable. Reality is what matters. And the reality is that because Wilson broke his hand, because North Carolina lost that game to VCU, Hubert Davis is no longer the school’s head coach. The school announced his firing on Tuesday evening.
The move was shocking on so many levels, not least because Davis is a member of the First Family of college basketball. He played for legendary, venerated Dean Smith from 1988-92, was an assistant under Roy Williams for nine years, and was the obvious heir to the throne when Williams retired in 2021. Davis is as Carolina Blue as they come. He also has a stellar recruiting class coming in led by 6-foot-7 forward Maxi Adams and 6-foot-5 guard Dylan Mingo.
Tuesday’s announcement followed several days of meetings between Davis, athletic director Bubba Cunningham, incoming athletic director Steve Newmark and chancellor Lee Roberts. A source with knowledge of those conversations told Hoops HQ that the brass asked Davis if he wanted to continue as coach, and Davis answered with a resounding yes. But Davis didn’t just lose the confidence of the administration. He lost the donors. That’s crippling in today’s environment. Without donor support, Davis would not have been able to muster the necessary resources to sign good players out of the transfer portal and retain the ones he needed to keep.
The double whammy is that the next coach will almost certainly not be a member of the Carolina family. Davis was the fourth such coach to succeed Smith, a lineage that included Bill Guthridge and Matt Doherty, who was also fired in 2003 for losing too much. There do not appear to be any candidates who played or coached at North Carolina who are prepared to step into this position. The smart and obvious move is for the school to hire the best coach available, full stop.
The reasons for Davis’ firing went well beyond Wilson’s injury, of course. It actually goes back to his first season as head coach. Yes, he took North Carolina as a No. 8 seed to the NCAA championship game, where it lost to Kansas. Along the way, Davis handed Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski two devastating losses — the first in Krzyzewski’s final home game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and then second in the Final Four in the only meeting between the storied rivals in the NCAA Tournament. But that late surge overshadowed what was otherwise a disappointing first season. In mid-February, the Tar Heels were 15-5 in the ACC and very much on the NCAA Tournament bubble. They finished strong, but followed up in 2022-23 by becoming the first team ranked No. 1 in the preseason AP Top 25 to fail to qualify for the NCAA Tournament.
In 2023-24, Davis brought the Tar Heels back to the Sweet Sixteen, where they lost to Alabama, but last season they were the last team selected — and a controversial inclusion at that. That put a heavier onus for Davis to rebound this winter. North Carolina wasn’t elite, but it was a regular in the top 25 rankings, and pulled off a dramatic, spirit-lifting comeback over Duke on Feb. 7. Wilson’s 23 points, 4 rebounds and 2 assists made the difference in that game. Three days later, he broke his left hand at Miami.
Whether Davis deserved to be fired with this kind of record, especially given Wilson’s injury, is very much up for debate. I would lean no, but it’s inarguable that this program was not living up to the standards set by its luminous history and passionate fan base. The fact that the despised Blue Devils have not missed a beat after Jon Scheyer took over for Krzyzewski was another burr in the fans’ proverbial saddles. There’s only so much suffering a community can take.
Where did Davis go wrong? There are many facets to the answer, but the most simple one is that he did not bring in the talent required to win at the highest levels. His recruiting was meh, his portal decisions suspect. If it’s true the team had a $14 million payroll this season as reported, then the results were not commensurate. Most troublesome is the fact that it wasn’t until February 2025 that the program hired a General Manager for the men’s basketball program. There was no real explanation as to why it took so long, but it smacked of hubris for North Carolina to think that its illustrious pedigree was enough to ensure the winning would continue. As the old saying goes, adapt or die, and Davis’ inability to adapt quickly enough to the rapidly changing landscape expedited his demise.
There are other macro indicators that North Carolina athletics has become dysfunctional. Cunningham’s decision to hire Bill Belichick as football coach looked like a master stroke a year ago, but it has proven to be a disaster, at least in year one. The administration has totally botched its efforts to move the basketball program from the Dean E. Smith Center to a modern off-campus arena that would be part of a neighborhood development project. The initiative includes the demolition of the Dean Dome to make way for expansion of the medical school and undergraduate housing. It’s probably a necessary evolution, but to undertake it without getting buy-in from Williams and other former players and coaches was a massive, unforced turnover.
Even if you argue a coaching change was necessary, the school handled it badly. The news that Davis could be in trouble started to break with a report on Saturday from CBS’ Matt Norlander. In the days that followed, Cunningham and other members of the administration let Davis twist in the wind before finally dropping the hammer on Tuesday evening. The clumsy management does not bode well for how that same leadership will engineer the transition to a new coach.
As for who will succeed Davis, as I said, the only sure thing is that it will not be someone inside the Carolina family. It probably will also not be a “big name” of the sort that fans usually pine for. The school will take big swings, beginning with former Florida coach and current Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan. The Bulls will not be in the NBA playoffs, but their season does not end until April 12. That’s five days after the transfer portal opens. Maybe Donovan would make the move now, but he hasn’t coached in college in 11 years, and he knows a lot has changed, mostly for the worse. It would be hard for North Carolina to hold off until the end of the NBA season, but if Donovan would say yes, it would be worth the wait. But Carolina would need to know for sure he will say yes, and that’s a very hard promise to secure.
The other superhero NBA candidate is Brad Stevens, the President of Basketball Operations for the Boston Celtics. I’ve heard chatter the last couple of years that Stevens was more intrigued by the possibility of returning to college coaching than many realize, but if the playoffs started today, his team is the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. It’s hard to imagine Stevens leaving the Celtics right before the playoffs.
There are several hot-name-type candidates in the college ranks, but most of them come with prodigious buyouts: Todd Golden’s is $16 million, Tommy Lloyd’s is $11 million, Nate Oats’ is $18 million (though it reduces to a mere $10 million on April 1), Dusty May’s is $7.5 million. Having to pay those buyouts, plus the $5 million the school now owes Davis, before they’ve spent a dime on salary and player compensation amounts to a prohibitive cost. So I would pretty much rule those guys out.
The two most economic big-name choices would be T.J. Otzelbeger, whose buyout is $4 million, and Scott Drew, whose buyout is $4.5 million. Otzelberger is a strong cultural fit at Iowa State, and he knows it. Drew would probably take the job in a heartbeat, but his star has faded over the last two seasons, which is ironic considering he turned down the Kentucky job two years ago. Mark Few reportedly has a buyout of either zero or close to it, but he has turned down so many chances at power conference jobs, it’s unlikely he would leave Gonzaga just as it is about to start playing in the newly reconstructed Pac-12.
After you move on from that tier, you have some capable candidates like Vanderbilt’s Mark Byington and Virginia’s Ryan Odom. They’re not sexy names, but they might be the best that North Carolina can do.
And keep in mind that when a coaching change like this happens, the incoming freshmen typically re-open their recruitments and at least entertain the idea of signing elsewhere. That puts even more of a premium on finding a new coach quickly. Given how long the brass at Carolina took to come to a decision on Davis, I don’t have much faith they have a smart succession plan in place.
It’s not easy to fire a member of the family, but North Carolina came to the conclusion that doing so was less painful than letting Davis continue. Eventually, this wound will heal and the future will arrive, but the present moment in Chapel Hill is unsettling, uncertain, and uncharacteristic for this once-proud college basketball blueblood.
DAVIS OUT AT UNC
Tar Heel Nation Divided: Battle Lines Drawn Over Fate of Dean Dome
With the future of North Carolina’s Smith Center in question, some fans are rallying to kill a new development plan — and save a titan of Tar Heel history
Have Hubert Davis and North Carolina Turned the Corner on the Recruiting Trail?
Tar Heels head coach Hubert Davis has been criticized in the past about his ability to consistently attract the nation’s top high school talent, but he’s landed some talented players of late. Can he change the narrative by translating that recent recruiting success into postseason results?
North Carolina Suffers Brutal Ending to a Once-Promising Season in Loss to VCU
The 6th-seeded Tar Heels blow a 19-point lead to fall to 11th-seeded VCU
BREAKING: North Carolina Star Caleb Wilson Out for Season After Breaking Thumb
The freshman forward and projected top-five NBA Draft pick suffered the injury during a non-contact drill in practice on Thursday
Meet your guide
