“Viewpoints” is a place on Chapelboro where local people are encouraged to share their unique perspectives on issues affecting our community. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work, reporting or approval of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com. If you’d like to contribute a column on an issue you’re concerned about, interesting happenings around town, reflections on local life — or anything else — send a submission to viewpoints@wchl.com.
The Breaks of the Game
A perspective from Thad Williamson
Less than three short weeks ago, North Carolina’s men’s basketball team and its fans were celebrating their first best-ever home season—18 contests without defeat—after closing out a tight, tense win over Clemson. Many observers were crediting Coach Hubert Davis, his staff, and his team with the resilience shown in winning five of six games without injured Caleb Wilson.
And not only Tar Heel fans but the entire college basketball world was anxiously awaiting Wilson’s return and wondering just how deep this Carolina team might go in March.
In less than three weeks and just three games, the Carolina basketball world has been turned on its head. The first triggering event was Wilson breaking his thumb in his first full practice back, ending his season and presumably his Tar Heel career.
Most observers and fans could give Carolina a pass on the loss to Duke in Cameron Indoor, coming just a day after the team learned of Wilson’s injury. Carolina showed some fight to still be in the game early second half before being buried by a Blue Devil run.
But then Carolina turned in a lackluster ACC Tournament performance in Charlotte to a good but not great Clemson team. A fierce comeback to give the Tar Heels a very slight chance at the end could not mask the fact that Carolina should never have been in a deep double-digit deficit in the first place. Estonian center Henri Veesaar showed up with a strong performance, most of his colleagues did not, and Carolina made a quick return trip back to Chapel Hill.
The coup de grace came in Greenville, South Carolina this past Thursday. The Tar Heels played brilliantly for an extended stretch late in the first half and early in the second half, building a nineteen-point lead over VCU. Then, as Carolina had done in several home games this year (Navy, Syracuse, Louisville), the Heels seemed to lose focus: settling for jumpers instead of continuing to feed Veesaar, letting VCU’s key shooters get free too easily.
That opening was enough to let the capable Rams back into the game, but even then Carolina was in excellent position to win entering the final minute—only to make an astonishing array of mistakes: a missed one-on-one, a needless five-second violation, allowing a wide open layup to tie the game, then turning the ball over 40 feet from the basket before the Heels could even get a shot off.
VCU, to be sure, got red hot at the end of regulation, but in overtime they were stone cold. Yet Carolina still couldn’t take advantage—couldn’t finish at the rim, couldn’t hit wide open threes, couldn’t make enough free throws.
That was a game you expect Carolina to win not 9 of 10 times, but more like 99 of 100 times.
And just like that, it appears, Hubert Davis’s five-year tenure as head basketball coach at his beloved alma mater could well be ending. Criticism simmering all year, that seemingly had been silenced by a 24-7 regular season, quickly bubbled over into frustration: not just over the single loss, but over a long-term pattern of inconsistency.
If you are heartbroken over this turn of events, I’m with you. There’s a lot in Davis’s on-court record to defend, indeed be proud of. But more important than that is Davis has done his best to embody the ethos of his college coach and mentor, Dean Smith—genuinely caring about his players while pursuing on-court excellence. For many of us, Coach Davis has represented the hope that the Smith ethos could somehow still be realized in this modern era of explicitly professionalized college sports. Nor was that hope in vain—Davis’s teams have delivered some remarkable moments, and his players consistently professed love for the program and the university.
Unfortunately, fairness doesn’t come into the picture in assessing coaches at this level, in this era. And in that respect, things have changed less than they might appear over the last half century.
Some twenty-five years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Coach Smith for my book More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much to So Many, which was at its core a study and account of how even people who never played for the Tar Heels feel their lives have been profoundly and positively shaped by Coach Smith’s basketball program.
In that interview Smith recounted that when donors and boosters would tell him they would be happy if he continued to recruit fine young men who would good students, he never fully believed them. Instead, he said, “It’s still very important that we keep scoring.” In other words, Smith well knew that being a coach of fine young men who didn’t win enough games wouldn’t have kept him in the Chapel Hill head coaching job for thirty-six years.
But here’s where the unfair part comes in: Hubert Davis did win games, including 5-straight twenty-win seasons and an overall record remarkably similar to Roy Williams’s last five years as head coach. He won an ACC regular season title outright, made a Final Four, and delivered both the greatest road win in program history (at Duke in 2022) and its most important NCAA tournament victory outside of a championship game (also in 2022, against Duke).
Davis had two teams (2022 and 2024) that met the so-called standard of national prominence, relevance, and sustained March basketball. He had two that clearly did not, in 2023 and 2025. And he had this year’s team, which in its last game fully healthy beat Duke, the only ACC team to do so. But instead of this being a third season of March relevance, as likely would have been the case had Wilson returned, it was a second consecutive first-round exit.
Is it fair that a coach’s future could come down to a freak injury? No—but as any basketball lifer will tell you, it’s a make-or-miss sport, and no one is exempt from what author David Halberstam termed “The Breaks of the Game.”
That said, almost everyone can agree that something needs to change, and results need to be better in Chapel Hill. Hence the “review” of the program that is currently underway.
Davis himself stated in early 2025 that the old system didn’t work anymore, necessitating the creation of the General Manager position. Yet further evolution in the direction of a fully professionalized model seems inevitable, with or without Davis.
At the end of that process, will any of this still feel like “Carolina Basketball,” a program defined by intense loyalty, high standards, and a genuine sense of family and connectedness stretching across generations?
That’s a question university leaders must not neglect: the close connections to the program among former players is a tangible, nearly unique asset. Attachments to place, history, and memory are key reasons why people care about the team so much in the first place—and are willing to spend significant amounts of money on tickets and merchandise.
As to the decision at hand: Hubert Davis has done too much for, and means too much to, the University of North Carolina, to be treated with anything less than maximum respect and dignity. He has done his best to extend the Carolina basketball he and many of us know and love into this new professionalized era, delivered some incredible moments, and earned the gratitude of the entire university community.
If Carolina does retain Davis in the head coaching role, he needs to be given maximum support for the duration of his contract. Year-to-year uncertainty is no recipe for long-term success at the level everyone in Chapel Hill expects.
Conversely, if the current review ends with North Carolina bringing in a new head coach, I hope they have at least some of the positive virtues Hubert Davis has exhibited as a human being and a coach of young people.
I hope they understand the imperative of showing respect for Carolina’s storied history. I hope they will actively embrace the generations of former players who have long played critical roles as recruiters, mentors, and champions for the program.
And, it goes without saying, they also will be expected to keep scoring.
Thad Williamson is author of “More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much to Many”
“Viewpoints” on Chapelboro is a recurring series of community-submitted opinion columns. All thoughts, ideas, opinions and expressions in this series are those of the author, and do not reflect the work or reporting of 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com.
