Blowouts are rare but they have happened before to Carolina.
There is a famous story from the annals of UNC basketball, this one 45 years ago after the fourth-ranked Tar Heels suffered their third defeat in four games and dropped to No. 13 in the polls.
Following a 93-73 loss at Clemson not even that close, Dean Smith told his players to take the next two days off, come back ready to practice and he’d tell them how they were going to win the national championship.
Despite losing senior center Tom LaGarde to a season-ending knee injury two weeks later, Carolina won 15 straight games before the truly heartbreaking 1977 NCAA championship loss to Marquette in Atlanta. Of course, Smith was on his way to the Hall of Fame and two national titles, and those Tar Heels still had Phil Ford, Walter Davis, Mike O’Koren and John Kuester. The story didn’t come out until years later, because Smith wanted it kept between him and the team.
At this point, there is little comparison between the ’77 Heels and Hubert Davis’ first team that has now been blown out by 20-plus points in consecutive games for the first time since 2002, the infamous 8-20 season.
Along with the poor shooting and worse defending that has plagued the 2022 edition, there is growing criticism of Davis for his coaching, yes — but also for his penchant to oversell his players’ abilities right now when that is turning out to be hyperbole at the highest order.
He has called one big man on his team (not Armando Bacot) potentially dominating on both ends of the court. He has heaped praise on a guard who has lost his shot and minutes. He has predicted Tar Heel stardom for two young players who weren’t in the top ten of the rotation.
And now, knowledgeable fans are noticing after the overselling and under-delivery of UNC football head coach Mack Brown last fall. Davis has “. . . a troubling tendency to wildly overstate his views on the team and its players. . . his positive outlook is way overboard . . . his team was a ‘national contender’ and now wasn’t as good as Wake Forest.”
This could be more damaging than even a season with an underachieving team, for example, with the families of the players and recruits. Hubert is a very popular rookie head coach at a cultured college athletic program. Surely, someone there can help him.
Photo via Todd Melet.
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