CHAPEL HILL – Hubert Davis and Armando Bacot had a moment together as they briskly walked through the tunnel on their way to North Carolina’s locker room Saturday night.

Davis was just in front of and to the left of Bacot, who then barely grazed his coach with his left arm. Davis immediately turned around, saw that it was Bacot, and gave him a hug. He gave the 6-foot-10 Tar Heel a kiss, too.

“I told him I loved him and I'm so proud of him,” Davis said, after Bacot scored 25 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in a 93-84 win over Duke at the Smith Center.

“And I gave him a kiss on the cheek, or on the neck. I couldn't get up to his cheek. It was good, just really proud of him.”

A few days earlier, Davis and Bacot got together, though it was in the coach’s office and was also about love and affection, the kind UNC’s third-year coach unabashedly expresses about all of his players. But Bacot was in need of the chat his coach requested in a text.

You see, Davis asks each of his players to see him once a week to discuss things other than basketball. He often says, “If I don’t know you, I can’t coach you.”

He has known Bacot for nine years since the Richmond, VA, native and two-time first-team All-ACC performer was in middle school. So, as much as the talk was about some non-hoops stuff, it was really mainly about basketball, Bacot’s recent dip in production and what he has said about his role on the team.

Entering Saturday’s game versus the No. 7 Blue Devils, Bacot had scored 10, five, five, and nine points in UNC’s previous four games, respectively. He’d attempted only 24 shots in them, as well.