As expected, North Carolina has moved on from men's basketball coach Hubert Davis. The move comes nearly a week after the Tar Heels blew a 17-point lead to VCU in the first round of the NCAA tournament, marking the second straight year the Heels have been bounced in the first round.
On the surface, this move has nothing to do with football. Dig a little deeper, though, and I think the UNC basketball search will tell us a lot about college athletics.
What is UNC basketball these days? Davis went 125-54 (68-30 ACC) in his five seasons in Chapel Hill. His first season ended on a legendary run where the Tar Heels upset Duke in Coach K's final home game, then ended Coach K's career by beating Duke again in the Final Four. That was kind of it, though. North Carolina only won one ACC regular season/tournament championship under Davis, and that Final Four run came as a No. 8 seed. Since UNC's 2017 national championship won under Roy Williams, here's where the Tar Heels were seeded in the NCAA tournament (if they made it at all) and how they performed:
2018: No. 2 (upset in second round)
2019: No. 1 (Sweet 16)
2020: would not have reached tournament had it been held
2021: No. 8 (first round)
2022: No. 8 (national runner-up)
2023: declined NIT invitation
2024: No. 1 (Sweet 16)
2025: No. 11 (first round)
2026: No. 6 (first round)
In nine seasons, that's three times the Heels have earned a high seed but bowed out earlier than expected, three first round exits, two missed tournaments, and one Cinderella run to the title game. Compare that to Duke, who has five Elite Eights (and counting), two Final Fours, and five No. 1 or No. 2 seeds.
We're about to see what North Carolina thinks about North Carolina basketball. UNC basketball is a top-5, non-football brand in college athletics, and it's not No. 5. What does that mean in 2026? Well, for one, the whole reason the school hired Bill Belichick in the first place is that UNC did the math and decided Tar Heel basketball alone isn't enough to get North Carolina into the club in the event of a formal split between the haves and have-nots in the not-too-distant future. As we know, that search was a complete mess, with UNC board chairman John Preyer going over AD Bubba Cunningham's head to hire Belichick. Belichick is now making $10 million a year, with the first three seasons guaranteed.
Not to say North Carolina doesn't care about football, but everyone who's anyone at UNC is going to want a say in the next basketball coach.
The next UNC basketball coach will make less than Belichick -- best I can tell, the only public schools that pay their hoops coach more than their football coach are Arkansas, Kansas and Michigan State -- but I'll be more interested in how UNC spends its finite dollars. When push meets shove, is UNC splurging its rev-share dollars on a power forward or a defensive end?
We're about to see what college basketball thinks about North Carolina. The last time the UNC basketball job opened was 2021, but the last time it really opened was 19-freaking-52. More than 70 years ago, UNC fired Tom Scott and hired Frank McGuire. McGuire stayed a decade before taking an NBA job and was replaced by an assistant named Dean Smith.
Here are the four coaches UNC has employed following Smith's 36-season run:
-- Dean Smith assistant
-- Dean Smith player
-- Dean Smith player/assistant
-- Dean Smith player
Roy Williams was a unicorn candidate in that he was a Smith disciple who'd been to three Final Fours at Kansas before coming back home. There are no Roy Williamses this time around.
Early Hot Boards indicate the Heels will make "make-him-say-no" runs at Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan and Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens. When both men inevitably turn the Heels down, the list will then move to a who's who of current college coaches: Arizona's Tommy Lloyd, Michigan's Dusty May, Iowa State's TJ Oztenberger, Florida's Todd Golden, and Alabama's Nate Oats.
All of those men are either favorites to win this season's national championship, won last year's national championship, or coached in a Final Four more recently than North Carolina. They also coach in better basketball conferences than the ACC, who placed only Duke in this year's Sweet 16 out of eight entrants.
Power 4-to-Power 4 moves don't happen in college basketball near to the degree they do in college football. Mark Pope never won an NCAA tournament game in five seasons at BYU, and he got the Kentucky job. Outside of the rare circumstances that led John Calipari to Arkansas, the last college basketball coach seriously contending for a national title to take another job he had no prior connection to was... when John Calipari left Memphis for Kentucky, in 2009?
It's been a while. Then again, it's been even longer since North Carolina threw its weight around on the open market. How much weight UNC has to throw likely depends on how much North Carolina is determined to bring basketball back in a football-centric world.