Welcome to North Carolina\u2019s offseason of discontent.<\/p>\n
The Tar Heels blew a 19-point lead<\/a> against No. 11 seed VCU in Thursday\u2019s first-round NCAA Tournament game in Greenville, S.C. It is the second consecutive year that UNC has failed to advance past the first round of the tournament.<\/p>\n Coach Hubert Davis\u2019 future will be the No. 1 talking point moving forward , displacing, for now, the great debate over the future of the Smith Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked about the back-to-back early exits after the loss, Davis said: \u201cThat\u2019s a big thinking question, and I apologize, I\u2019m just not there right now. Just really sad that we\u2019re not continuing to play and to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if Davis wasn\u2019t ready for that conversation, everybody else is.<\/p>\n \u201cNorth Carolina can either keep Hubert Davis another year as head coach or it can get serious about its basketball program, but it cannot do both,\u201d Dan Wolken of Yahoo! Sports wrote after the VCU loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n The conversations about Davis\u2019 future have been percolating among North Carolina fans \u2014 and administrators \u2014 since last year when the Tar Heels were the final team into the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has helped me grow, he\u2019s helped me persevere and he\u2019s helped me become a better man,\u201d senior Seth Trimble said after the VCU loss. \u201cEverybody has their flaws. Coach Davis, he isn\u2019t the perfect coach. But he\u2019s a coach that\u2019s made me better. He\u2019s a coach that\u2019s made guys better and he\u2019s shown that he can win here. I know he gets hate. Over the last four years, I know he\u2019s gotten a lot of it, but I\u2019m going to continue to ride with him.\u201d<\/p>\n This season, seen as a make-or-break year, started well. Buoyed by the play and personality of star freshman Caleb Wilson, the Tar Heels climbed to as high as No. 11 in The Associated Press poll and beat fellow blue bloods Kansas, Kentucky and Duke in the same season for the first time since their national championship year of 1982.Trimble\u2019s game-winning 3-pointer in the final seconds to beat Duke in Chapel Hill was a highlight for the ages.<\/p>\n But Wilson was injured in the next game against Miami and didn\u2019t return to the lineup after that, greatly diminishing the team\u2019s ceiling. His absence forced other players into bigger roles. UNC suffered a blowout loss at NC State without Wilson and Henri Veessar, an Arizona transfer who became the team\u2019s go-to offensive player without Wilson. Even with Veesaar, the Tar Heels lost to Duke, Clemson in the ACC Tournament and VCU to close the season.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s done a great job,\u201d Veesaar said after the VCU loss. \u201cAt the end of the year, I feel like we were at a really good spot and then, obviously, Caleb\u2019s injury, I think that affects our season. I don\u2019t want to put it on that. I feel like we had enough in this group where we could have made a run, beat the teams that we lost to at the end of the season. I just feel like we didn\u2019t do a good job of closing out the games.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson\u2019s absence complicates the decision. Where would the Tar Heels have been had the 6-foot-10 star not gotten hurt? Also a factor: Duke, which like UNC had to replace a legendary coach, has won the regular season and ACC titles in back-to-back seasons and Jon Scheyer shows no sign of slowing down on the recruiting trail or the court. Duke has won three ACC titles in four seasons under Scheyer.<\/p>\n UNC has none under Davis, who is 125-54 in five seasons since replacing Roy Williams, who won three national titles at UNC. The Tar Heels have reached the NCAA Tournament four times in those five seasons, but just once have they been seeded higher than No. 6.<\/p>\n In 18 seasons under Williams, the Tar Heels either missed the tournament (2010, 2020) or were eliminated in the first round (2021) three times. Under Davis, it\u2019s happened three times in the last four seasons.<\/a><\/p>\n