Trimble reacts in the Tar Heels’ loss to the Blue Devils in the ACC tournament. / Jim Dedmon-Imagn Images
CHARLOTTE—Whenever the ACC men’s basketball tournament arrives in town, the combination of being a major metro area in the heart of the league’s traditional footprint typically allows for the marquee showcase to attract plenty of high-profile players and celebrities in the various courtside seats that dot Spectrum Center where the event takes place.
This year, sitting right at midcourt in the most prime spots just next to the television announcers, were indeed two recognizable former players who had no problem standing out amid a packed house for Friday night’s semifinals. While in the past the seats could have featured any number of former NBA All-Stars or first-round picks, this year it was two quarterbacks, New England Patriots rookie Drake Maye and Seattle Seahawks backup Sam Howell, who were donning some light blue to sit opposite of their alma mater’s bench.
Yet in the wake of the North Carolina Tar Heels suffering another crushing, inexplicable 74–71 loss to the Duke Blue Devils, the pair’s presence witnessing the latest chapter in college basketball’s defining rivalry should be leading to an even greater existential question that needs to be asked for the school they support.
Are the Tar Heels a football school now?
On its face, it is remarkable to even ask that given Carolina’s place in the pantheon of bluebloods on the hard court. But perhaps it should be asked—heck, needs to be asked—given that the answer should go a long way in determining whether coach Hubert Davis should return for another season at his alma mater.
If so, with Bill Belichick of all people sitting back on campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., right now, Davis likely has nothing to fear over the coming days. Certainly not after his team was bounced by a rival playing without two of its top players and, in a constant refrain this campaign, saw another furious late rally come up short thanks to an incredible missed chance that was completely within their control.
If not though, if UNC still wants to act like one of the big boys all those national title banners hanging in the Dean Dome would indicate, it’s probably time for school brass to start thinking about ruthlessly showing him the door for what is to be a third straight season of disappointing results and will unthinkably be a second year of missing the NCAA tournament.
“Everybody is going to have their opinion,” said Davis afterward, his arm around forward Jae’Lyn Withers in a tight embrace. “We all make mistakes. I’m an imperfect person so that makes me an imperfect coach. There’s 50,000 mistakes I make every day as a person and as a coach. But everything is filtered through, what’s in the best interest in this team from this program?
“There’s so many things in the game that we did well today and some things that we didn’t do well.”
It is the latter that hangs over the most recent loss to Duke, spoiling a furious second-half rally from down 24 that ultimately led to a loss that won’t ever be forgotten on either side of the ledger on Tobacco Road.
With four seconds left and the Heels trailing by a point, Ven-Allen Lubin was sitting at the free throw line with the opportunity to give his team the lead or, at worst, offer up the possibility of overtime. The junior forward missed the first, rattling it around as Spectrum Center groaned or cheered depending on the shade of blue the fans were wearing. The horn sounded and Davis inserted Withers, a sixth-year transfer from the Louisville Cardinals who provided an additional rebounding threat should Lubin miss the second.
He didn’t, seemingly tying the game. Or so everybody thought.
While it was difficult to hear over the roar of the crowd anticipating five extra minutes in the moment, officials had blown their whistle and called Withers for one of the costliest lane violations in recent memory.
“Honestly, it was disbelief initially,” said Withers, his arm wrapped around Davis’s shoulder nearly 45 minutes after walking off the court with a towel over his head to hide his tears.
“We consciously told Jae’Lyn we loved him, we’re here for him, and we didn’t lose the game because of his free throw violation,” guard Seth Trimble said. “I missed three free throws. RJ [Davis] missed a one-and-one earlier in the game and missed it before the lane violation.
“It’s not just free throws, there were a lot of other things that went wrong.”
That’s the problem.
Plenty of things went wrong against a Duke team that featured national player of the year candidate Cooper Flagg on the bench in warmups and not only coughed up a massive lead down the stretch, but couldn’t buy a basket amid the final 3½ minutes it was scoreless until Kon Knueppel iced a trip to Saturday’s final with a pair of free throws.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to give you the best rundown of that game. It’s still a blur to me,” Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer said. “We were up four. We couldn’t score. They were scoring down every time down.”
It was all in North Carolina’s hands, digging itself out of another problem of its making … right up until it seemingly dug its grave again.
So now the question has to be asked: Is UNC a football school or does it still have those firm roots on the hard court that have sustained it for far more months every academic year?
When it comes to recent actions, the needle points firmly in favor of the former. Hard as it still is to believe, it hired Belichick to run the football program. Even gave him $10 million (and then some) to do it, too. Tell us you’re pushing your chips in without needing to tell us you’re pushing your chips.
Yet this is Carolina. The place where the Carolina Way is more than just a mantra but rather a guiding force for decades far beyond the triangle within which it originated and propagated.
It’s why Frank McGuire gave way to Dean Smith, who in turn gave way to Bill Guthridge. It’s why amid a slew of options, the school turned to Matt Doherty before eventually rectifying that mistake by bringing in Roy Williams. It’s why Davis, without a head coaching victory on his résumé at the time, was handed the reins of the program four seasons ago and why he was given an extension over the offseason nobody thought was a good enough idea to announce publicly because of the blowback it was sure to cause.
Davis, a beloved player and an even better broadcaster, knows what the expectations are in Chapel Hill. He understands them. He’s now about to reckon with them should the NCAA tournament selection committee, quite coincidentally chaired by his boss in UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham, leave the Heels out of the field on Selection Sunday.
The case for them is a thin one, helped only by the fact that the bubble this season is as perilously thin as it’s been in ages. The Heels are now 1–12 in Quad 1 games, with the lone victory coming in December against the UCLA Bruins, who were up-and-down during their maiden voyage through the Big Ten.
Not only that, UNC was unable to take advantage of a historically weak season for the conference. It was blown out by Duke two other times for the fourth three-game sweep by the Blue Devils in four decades. UNC failed to keep it close against the ACC’s other tournament teams in Louisville and the Clemson Tigers. Much will be made of the team winning eight of their past 10 games, but six of them were against teams that finished below .500.
It would be one thing if the résumé could be balanced out by the metrics, but UNC falls short in that department, too. They entered the night No. 35 in KenPom and in the NET, with the Heels just ahead of the UC San Diego Tritons, who just completed the process of transitioning to Division I in the later rankings.
Worse, the team that started the season in the top 10, failed to become better than the sum of its parts over the course of the campaign for a fourth straight time under Davis. The shooting is off outside of spurts and turnovers are up. Far too often in 2024–25, the wins it should have had in its grasp, became losses it couldn’t afford.
It mounted a big rally against the Kansas Jayhawks in November that also fell short in a wild ending, experienced a trip to Maui to forget and was lucky to even have that lone Quad 1 win against the Bruins. If not for that trump card of ending Mike Krzyzewski’s career so emphatically, there’s not much in terms of results for Davis to hang his hat on—particularly as the Heels have seen the gap grow between them and the Blue Devils in just about every facet since.
UNC, to be fair, seems to recognize that business as usual under the auspices of the Carolina Way is no longer enough to reach the heights they want to reach. The school has hired long time NBA agent Jim Tanner as general manager recently and are continuing to staff up off the court. Revenue sharing offers another area where the school is set to take advantage of in the coming months and, with a more proactive approach when it comes to the roster, it would surprise nobody if Davis gets the Heels back in the top 10 of the preseason polls next season.
After all, before the time comes to debate things on the court, we’ll all be well into the thick of a suddenly much more important football season around the triangle where hoops normally rule all.
If Carolina is true to its roots, though, Friday night’s latest result should be enough to force the question to be asked if Davis is the right man for the job. Better talent isn’t worth much more on the back of the checks that pays for it if the coach can’t get the program back to where it aims to be.
Besides, all that money might be better served across campus where a coach of plenty of renown might know just what to do with it.
“They’re good questions in regards to the NCAA tournament, and those are questions that have been asked over a month,” Davis said. “For a month and a half, we basically played must-win games. In that situation, our team played their best. That’s pretty cool from a bunch of kids. You want to talk about success or proud, I can go a number of different directions on that one.”
So can his employer.
If North Carolina has determined the investment in football should continue unabated, there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad when it comes to basketball. Withers’s lane violation can simply be a cruel ending that caps off a disappointing 2025 that will probably be official when it comes time to decline a trip to the NIT.
If the school still thinks that the sport which has fueled its national reputation is important however, it could be a much longer 72 hours through Selection Sunday for Davis and the Heels.
