RJ Davis knows his jersey number “4” will hang in the rafter at the Smith Center one day. He is well aware that only legends JJ Redick and Tyler Hansbrough have scored more points in ACC history.
And he knows there are still more games to play before his North Carolina basketball career comes to an end. And for that, it’s hard for the White Plains, NY, native to fully grasp the totality of his career.
Highlight moments aren’t hard for Davis to roll off his tongue. The win at Duke in Mike Krzyzewski’s final game inside Cameron Indoor Stadium is right there at the top along with beating the Blue Devils three weeks later in the Final Four in Coach K’s final game.
Scoring a Smith Center-record 42 points against Miami last season, playing in a national championship game, the crazy Covid year his freshman season, and now, a fifth and final season wearing Carolina blue have compartments inside Davis’ precious memory bank. All will be released at some point, but he’s not quite ready for that to happen.
“It doesn’t feel real to me because I’m still playing,” Davis said Thursday at the Smith Center. “To me, I don’t think I’ve really put [it] into like this magnifying glass of the magnitude of what I did last year. My number’s going into the rafters. I don’t think I really sat back myself and actually started from freshman year up until now [and] see what I actually accomplished.”
And he has accomplished a ton.
Davis was the ACC Player of the Year last season assuring his jersey will hang in the rafters forever. He was also a consensus first-team All-America a year ago, the first UNC guard to achieve that distinction since Joseph Forte in the 2020-21 season.
He is firmly in second place now on Carolina’s all-time leading scorer list and third all-time in ACC history with 2,620 points.
Don’t be mistaken, Davis is aware of the numbers and is comfortable talking about the honors, they just aren’t at the forefront of his thinking unless prompted.
“I mean it’s just crazy, it’s mind-blowing because I never told myself ‘okay, as a freshman, you’re gonna be ACC Player of the Year, you’re going to be a first-team All-America, you’re going to win all of these individual awards, you’re going to be playing in a National Championship, [playing] against Duke in the Final Four,’” he said. “It was more just about going out there and see if I belonged. When I look back on it, it’s like ‘wow, I came a long way.’”
He most certainly has. From a turnover-prone rookie playing in front of cardboard cut outs in the Maui Invitational in – checks notes – Asheville, NC, during Covid to the player and young man he’s become, Davis’ ride has been about personal development as much as basketball success.
Davis earned a degree last May in exercise and sport science in the sport administration program, and he enrolled in the fall in an MBA certificate program in leadership development.
NIL has been good to the 6-footer who has hit more 3-pointers (340) than anyone in UNC history. Davis is a pitch man for quite a few businesses, has earned well through the Carolina collective, and has a future in basketball and whatever else he’d like to get into after the ball stops bouncing.
And he has done this at the same school. In an era where players bounce around to numerous programs, Davis has resisted staying put. He is a Tar Heel through and through. That should not be mistaken he says.
“I think it just shows and speaks to my loyalty for the school and how much gratitude and how appreciative I am of this university and the years I’ve had, staying here all five years,” he said. “Building a legacy, I think that’s something I had on my mind, but knew I was capable of doing and wanted to do. When you come to a university like this and you have a lot of players that have had a lot of success, their numbers in the rafters, they won national championships and for you, like as a little kid, as a freshman [all that’s] on your mind is you want to get your feet wet, just trying to figure things out.
“For me to stay the next four years, and just the way my career had turned out, the way the players I’ve played with, the success I’ve had, that’s just something that you can only dream of. I’m glad my journey went the way it did. I’m glad I stayed all five years because college, you only get once. You’ll never get the type of experience, the type of friendships, and the relationships that you built. So, what I wanted to do was enjoy it and I think I did a good job of doing that.”
Averaging 17.2 points per game and a career-best 3.8 assists to go with tying his career-low for turnovers per game (1.5), Davis has embraced over time the added responsibility of leading and guiding. Perhaps his best period in that respect followed the Tar Heels’ low point of the season nearly four weeks ago at Clemson.
Davis led the charge to Carolina’s best three practices of the season later that week and it sparked a turnaround in which the Heels have not lost since. Davis has been outstanding when needed, and stable at all times.
He’s a veteran who turned 23 years of age in the fall, owner of numerous records with a place in history etched into perpetuity. And he’s a man now, not the smiling kid with the heavy New York accent trying to find himself in the South and during Covid in Roy Williams’ final season.
Davis still has the accent and always will. But he also has a ton of knowledge, layers of maturity, and a worldliness to him that reflects his time at UNC more than anything else.
That’s in his words; spoken like the gentleman he has become.
