Giglio: Patience will be key for Hubert Davis at UNC

By Joe Giglio, WRALSportsFan

Coaches love to talk about controlling the things you can control.

With Monday’s decision to hire Hubert Davis as the next men’s basketball coach North Carolina, athletic director Bubba Cunningham has completed the part that he can control.

Now comes the part he can’t: Patience from the fan base with Davis, a first-time head coach.

Patience has been in short supply with UNC fans when it comes to change or bumps in the road with its powerful basketball program.

They’re hardly alone in this trait, of course. When you’re leading a premiere program in college sports, whether it’s Alabama football or Tennessee women’s basketball, there’s a quick expiration date for the coaches who are not equal to the weight of the occupation.

Everything we know about Davis, 50, a former UNC star who went on to a 12-year NBA career before going to work for ESPN and eventually hired by Williams in 2012 as an assistant, suggests he will be up to the task.

But patience will be required. Davis inherits a better roster than Matt Doherty, the last “risk” hire from within the Carolina family in 2000, but not a better one than Williams had in 2003 when he returned to Chapel Hill from Kansas.

Williams, with a roster compiled by Doherty, led UNC to a national title in his second season.

And the game of college basketball is vastly different in 2021 than either situation that Doherty or Williams walked into.

As its currently constructed, it would be extraordinary for Davis to emulate Williams’ 2-year plan. Instead, Davis will have to be nimble in the transfer portal. It would be smart to add a veteran point guard to the talented roster mix he has.

He’ll have to get the right staff, too. Find a “no” coach, at least one assistant whom he trusts and will listen to when he needs to hear “no.”

He’ll have blend what he learned playing for Dean Smith in the late 1980s and early 1990s and what he has learned working with Williams.

On the court, the secondary break will still likely be prevalent, as will the fast pace preferred by Williams, but there’s going to be strategical adjustments that Davis will have to make to put his own spin on the program.

That might take more time than the fan base is used to or grants to coaches not named Roy Williams (even Smith was once hung in effigy by angry UNC fans).

Bill Guthridge went 34-4 in his first season after he replaced Smith and went to the Final Four in 1998 (and again two years later). But Guthridge’s critics within the UNC fan base thought he was too old to recruit and too tranquil on the sideline.

Doherty, for all of his self-inflicted problems in his second two seasons, went 26-7 with his first UNC team and the Heels were a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament.

Doherty was young (38 when he was hired) and good looking and stylistically everything that Guthridge wasn’t. Turned out that was both good (for one year anyway) and then bad.

Davis, if he’s not already familiar with Doherty’s mistakes, would be wise to freshen up on that particular chapter of Carolina family history. Specifically, consult the “no” coach before trying to fire any popular, long-time administrative assistants with the program.

I don’t think Davis will be another Doherty – another three-year flash and gone — but it’s also unfair to think he’s going to be another Williams or Smith.

This I do know: he will pop and have his moments but there might a delayed payoff. Carolina fans will have to demonstrate a patience level we haven’t seen from them since Mack Brown’s first tenure with the football program in the 1980s.

Brown, who turned UNC football into a top-10 program before leaving for Texas in 1997 and returning 21 years later, would be a great template for Davis.

Will that be good enough for Carolina basketball? Only time will tell.