CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Hubert Davis scored a big, badly-needed victory just after midnight Eastern Time on Friday.

No, North Carolina wasn’t playing at Cal or Stanford. And the victory won’t help the Tar Heels stay off the bubble on Selection Sunday.

At least this year.

But it was a victory nonetheless when five-star recruit Caleb Wilson announced his commitment, surrounded by former UNC All-American Kenny Smith and Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal on TNT’s “Inside the NBA” studio show. The 6-foot-9 Atlanta native chose the Tar Heels over rival Duke, Kentucky and several other blue-blood programs.

The announcement couldn’t have come at a better time for Davis, who needed the dose of good news to help cool some of the heat he’s been taking over his current team’s performance. After starting the season ranked No. 9 in the AP’s preseason poll, UNC has fallen out of the rankings and is in legitimate danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. That has only happened once in the past half-century, in 2002 and ‘23 when the program fell into disarray during the tenure of Matt Doherty.

It is a concerning turn for a program that had such a promising start when Davis took over for Roy Williams in 2021. Despite having no previous head coaching experience (Davis had been Williams’ assistant for nine years), he took the Tar Heels to the national championship game as a rookie in 2022, sending Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski into retirement with a Final Four victory over the Blue Devils. The Tar Heels also won an ACC regular season title a year ago.

That 2022 postseason run masked a so-so regular season that only warranted a No. 8 NCAA seed. And last year’s regular-season champions only made it as far as the Sweet Sixteen before coughing up a late lead and flaming out against Alabama.

With this year’s team treading water at 12-8 overall (5-3 ACC) heading into Saturday’s home game against Boston College, the whispers that Davis might not be the right man for the job are no longer confined to internet message boards. “At some point, we’ve got to start the conversation of what’s going on with Hubert Davis,” national analyst Jeff Goodman said recently on the “Field of 68” podcast. “It’s been such a rollercoaster. Going to the tournament every other year, it’s just not good enough.”

The stakes have only been raised with the Tar Heels’ hiring of Bill Belichick to coach North Carolina’s football team, which reflects the stronger financial commitment the school has made to that program. Still, while football might drive the financial bus these days amid the changing landscape of college athletics, basketball is and always will be UNC’s core identity.

Nobody knows that better than Davis. He has bled Carolina blue since he was a teenager. He grew up to become a sharpshooting all-conference guard who went on to have a long, successful professional career in the NBA, playing 12 years with six teams. When Williams retired, promoting Davis was the logical decision because of the time he’d spent on the Tar Heels’ bench and the love he has for the university and its traditions. The public seemed to understand that it might take some time for him to grow into the job.

As the Tar Heels continue to falter, Davis has been faced with questioning over the faulty construction of his current roster. His primary goal heading into the off-season was replacing big men Armando Bacot and Harrison Ingram. Yet, Davis whiffed in his attempts to attract a true inside presence in the transfer portal, leaving himself with a team built like a doughnut: Solid around the perimeter, but with a large hole in the middle.

UNC’s two tallest players, Jalen Washington and Jae’Lyn Withers, are stretch fours who are more comfortable facing the basket and playing away from it. As a result, the Tar Heels have struggled to score inside and more importantly, rebound. They rank 16th in the 18-team ACC in offensive rebounding (9.1 per game), an area that has traditionally been their strength. They rank 263rd nationally on KenPom in offensive rebound percentage.

Davis has also drawn criticism for his inconsistent substitution patterns, his handling of end-of-game situations like those that cost UNC winnable games against Stanford and Wake Forest last week, and for the simplistic answers he gives for explaining the issues that continue to plague his team.

An example came last Tuesday night when he was asked about the stagnation of his offense during a six-minute second half drought that contributed greatly to the Tar Heels’ 67-66 loss at Wake. “I don’t think the offense was stagnant,” Davis said. “I think we had some open shots and we had some good looks. Sometimes shots go in and sometimes they don’t.”

That’s true. So is the old Roy Williams adage that things always seem better when the ball goes in the basket.

Those losses followed a four-game win streak that made it seem as though the Tar Heels were finally starting to get their act together. But the losses to Stanford and Wake Forest followed because the offense turns the ball over too much (16.9 percent of their possessions, which ranks 10th in the ACC) and the  perimeter players rely too heavily on hoisting up shots from long range rather than attacking the basket.

Given that Boston College is one of the worst power conference teams in the country (the Eagles are in 17th place in the ACC and No. 231 in the NET), a loss on Saturday would ignite a full-blown crisis. But even if the Tar Heels win, they are heading into the toughest stretch of the ACC schedule with a pair of games against Duke as well as trips to Pittsburgh and Clemson. They have played one of the toughest schedules in the country and are ranked No. 39 in the NET, but they need to significantly improve upon their 1-6 record in Quad 1 games. With only five Quad 1 games remaining due to the weakness in the ACC, it is imperative that North Carolina start playing better and stringing together quality wins. Conjecture about Davis’ job security may still be premature, given all the goodwill he has accumulated in Chapel Hill and the commitment he just received from Caleb Wilson. If Davis wants to keep that conversation from gaining momentum, however, he would do well to find a way to get this team into the NCAA Tournament. Davis of all people understood the pressure that comes with the job and the expectations of the Tar Heel faithful. The obvious solution to his problems is to start winning again. The question is whether that will prove to be easier said than done.