Alright, let’s break this down like we’re chatting over coffee. On Wednesday, the North Carolina Tar Heels lost to the Louisville Cardinals, with a score of 83-70. Ouch! Now they’re sitting at 8-6 for the season.
You know how tough it can be to win at Yum! Center, right? But honestly, Louisville’s not that impressive this year either at 9-5 and ranked 54th in KenPom. Plus, they were missing a couple of key players, Koren Johnson and Kasean Pryor. This loss just adds to the growing list of evidence showing that the Tar Heels struggle to win those big games.
Carolina has six losses now! They’ve dropped games to Auburn, Florida, Alabama, Kansas, Michigan State, and now Louisville. They did have a nice win against UCLA on neutral ground, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.
This brings us to a bigger conversation about the state of North Carolina’s basketball program and their head coach, Hubert Davis. I’ve got a term for it: the “Hubert Davis Paradox.” Here’s why.
Davis was hired on April 5, 2021, to take over from Roy Williams, a coaching legend. The Tar Heels started the 2021 season ranked 19th, but soon dropped out of the rankings. They made it to the national title game as an eight-seed, but lost to Kansas.
Fast forward to the 2022 season—four of their top scorers from that runner-up team returned, so expectations were sky-high. But the season turned into a train wreck, and they ended up being the first preseason number one to miss the NCAA tournament. They finished 20-13.
Now we’re going into year three, and it looked promising. RJ Davis and Armando Bacot came back, while Caleb Love transferred out. Coach Davis snagged two great transfers, Cormac Ryan and Harrison Ingram, and the team ended the regular season at 25-6, earning a one-seed in the NCAA tournament. They did get upset by Alabama in the Sweet 16, but overall, it was a decent year three.
But now we’re in year four, and things are looking shaky. Davis missed out on some critical transfers, which has hurt the team. Despite some worries about depth, they started the season ranked ninth. But now, sadly, they’re sitting at 9-6 and are looking more like a bubble team.
The real kicker is that this pattern of having one decent season and then a bad one needs to stop. If Hubert Davis can’t turn things around this year, UNC might need to rethink things. Missing the NCAA tournament twice in three years? That’s just not acceptable for a program like North Carolina.
If you want to blame someone don’t blame Hubert He lost his interior big man to graduation and every one he attempted to recruit went elsewhere because of the NIL. Carolina has devoted all of their NIL money to football and without it it makes recruiting difficult, blame the system not the coach he can only do so much with what he has.