North Carolina fired men’s basketball coach Hubert Davis in March, ending a five-year tenure that fell short of the program’s championship standard despite consistent NCAA tournament appearances.
Athletic director Steve Newmark told TarHeel247 the decision followed months of evaluation and was not triggered solely by the Tar Heels’ 19-point second-half collapse to VCU in this year’s first round.
Advertisement
“The most difficult thing that an athletic director or a president of a sports team has to do is when is when you feel like you need to make a change,” Newmark said. “Sometimes, you have to make a change because the person isn’t the right fit, but often you make a change just because things had probably gotten to the point where bringing in some new blood would help energize and re-invigorate the program.
“And it has really nothing to do with what the person has done anything wrong. It was tough, and we agonized over it. And Hubert is as good a person as you’re going to meet. He cares for his players as much as anybody that I’ve ever seen in those types of positions. He put his blood, sweat and tears into this program.”
Davis, a former All-ACC guard at UNC, spent nine seasons as an assistant under Roy Williams before taking over the program at his alma mater. In five seasons as head coach he went 125-54, guided the Tar Heels to the 2022 national title game as a No. 8 seed and earned a No. 1 seed in 2024, when they exited in the Sweet 16.
Those peaks were ultimately offset by a series of postseason stumbles. Under Davis, North Carolina became the first team to open a season at No. 1 in the Associated Press poll and miss the NCAA tournament entirely. The Tar Heels also failed to advance beyond the round of 32 in each of the past two seasons, winning only three NCAA tournament games over four years — one of them in the First Four in Dayton, Ohio.
Advertisement
The program stayed nationally relevant but did not consistently reach the standard set by Davis’ former coach Dean Smith and Williams, whose long tenures defined modern North Carolina basketball.
The first-round loss to VCU was the third time in the last four NCAA tournament trips that UNC bowed out in its opener, a skid that began in Williams’ final season in 2020-21.
You have to go back to 1978-80 to find a similar low, when the Tar Heels were bounced in their first game three straight years — part of what was then the worst NCAA tournament stretch in program history, with UNC losing its opener in four of five seasons from 1976 to 1980.
Newmark said the VCU defeat — in which UNC squandered a 19-point second-half lead — was the latest and clearest example of a broader trend, not the sole cause of the decision.
Advertisement
“And I think we all know, in one game and in one half, things don’t sometimes go your way, and it was just a perfect storm,” Newmark said. “And so, a lot of people point to that game, but I think it was just more the determination that it was the right time to shake up the entire program.”
Follow us @TarHeelsWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of North Carolina Tar Heels news, notes and opinions.
This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: UNC AD reveals what behind decision to fire Hubert Davis
