North Carolina must now go outside the family to replace Hubert Davis, and that’s a good thing originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
If you wish to look at things from the most positive perspective possible, Bill Guthridge, Matt Doherty and Hubert Davis reached a combined three Final Fours and recruited the foundation of a team that won the fourth of the university’s six national championships in the time they served as North Carolina head coach.
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And then there’s the other view, which shows they missed the NCAA Tournament a combined three times in 11 years, finished with double-digit losses seven times, twice departed March Madness in first-round upsets and recruited the foundation of the Tar Heels’ only single-digit victory season in the past 60 years.
Their combined career records upon being hired: 22-15. All those wins and all those losses belonged to Doherty. Guthridge had been Dean Smith’s assistant for 30 years. Davis assisted Roy Williams for nine. All were considered part of the Carolina “family,” though, and that was essential to getting the job. This is the most coveted job in college coaching, and essentially 99 percent of the candidate pool had no chance whatsoever.
BENDER: Seven names to watch in North Carolina’s search
If you think about it, hiring from the fam allowed Carolina to be run by two of the greatest coaches in college basketball history, Dean Smith and Roy Williams, but also to bat just .400 in an arena where anything less than 1.000 costs money, time and more anguish than anyone wants to ponder.
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Hiring the best possible coach when the job is open always is the right way to go.
It’s open now, and that’s apparently the only way to go this time.
With Carolina alums Wes Miller and Jerry Stackhouse recently failing at the high-major level, there is no obvious candidate accustomed to wearing Carolina blue. The lessons of the past 30 years should be clear, however, and they should be embraced by all programs inclined to approach coaching changes as the Tar Heels have for too long.
Billy Donovan’s ties to Carolina? None. He played at Providence and a couple years in the NBA, worked as an assistant at Kentucky and then held college head coaching jobs at Marshall and Florida. T.J. Otzelberger? Played at Wisconsin-Whitewater, was an assistant at Iowa State and then succeeding through head coaching gigs at South Dakota State and UNLV to get back to the Cyclones. Mark Byington? He’s at least been in the general vicinity, as a player at UNC Wilmington, in the ACC as assistant at UVa and Virginia Tech before excelling as head coach at Georgia Southern, James Madison and Vanderbilt.
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Their extraordinary records and talent for the job should matter more than where they played and worked.
MORE: North Carolina parts ways with Hubert Davis
Davis was let go Tuesday, five days after his Heels were eliminated by VCU in a turgid performance that saw Carolina squander a 19-point lead in the second half and then miss all six shot attempts in overtime. There was a whisper of injustice in the timing, given the Tar Heels played the final nine games of the season without freshman Caleb Williams, one of five best players in college basketball this season. One never can know what the results would have been with him in the lineup, but they were 19-4 with victories over Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia and Duke prior to the injury.
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Through four prior seasons, though, there had been no sense of a consistent direction. In 2021-22, the Heels were trending toward an NCAA Tournament First Four game before a late rally that included a road win at Duke and got them to a No. 8 seed. From there, they made a stunning run to the Final Four that included a second straight win over the rival Blue Devils and a 15-point halftime lead over eventual champ Kansas in the title game.
Nearly the entire squad returned from that team and began the next year with the No. 1 ranking. They went 20-13 and missed the NCAAs. They nearly were excluded again last season, with a 22-13 mark that included just one high-quality victory. And then this season, whose roster was far better with Williams included but still lacked the sort of size and power that delivered the program’s most recent championships: in 2017 with Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks, in 2009 with Tyler Hansbrough, in 2005 with Sean May.
Moving on now might cost the Heels two top-25 recruits who had committed, wing Maximo Adams and point guard Dylan Mingo, and it’s not impossible to lose productive center Henri Veesar to another transfer.
Carolina needed a new direction for its program, though. And yes, that means away from the values that defined the program’s coaching decisions for the better part – and the worst – of three decades.
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