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CHAPEL HILL – Cookouts. Bowling. Home invites.
And none of it choreographed by the coaching staff?
Of the many things that have impressed North Carolina Basketball Coach Hubert Davis with his revamped roster this summer, is that he and the other coaches don’t have to plan team time together outside of working on their craft may top the list.
Perhaps one can call it a collection of personalities that simply mesh together. Old guys and young ones, yet they still fit together like old-time buddies.
“It’s just come together really quickly,” Davis said about his team’s off-court chemistry, including his two freshmen. “(Elliot Cadeau) and Zayden (High), and all the transfers; it’s come together really quickly.
“The personalities just work together in the locker room and out there on the floor. The chemistry is there, and I really like it.”
The ingredients are unique for UNC, but certainly reflective of where college basketball is these days. Ballyhooed point guard Cadeau reclassified to 2023 and enrolled in June. He will be 19 in September. High turns 19 next March.
Five new Tar Heels from the transfer portal are much older: Cormac Ryan will be 25 when UNC’s season starts in November; Paxson Wojcik will be 23; Jae’lyn Withers will be 23 in December; Harrison Ingram will be 21 in late November; and James Okonkwo will be 20 for the opener.
Davis credits the newcomers, but also his four returning scholarship players, notably fifth-year Heel Armando Bacot and senior guard RJ Davis. Bacot is 23 (will be 24 in early March), and Davis turns 22 in October.
“When you have leadership like RJ, and when you have leadership like Armando that has been here before and experienced the highs and lows, they have done an unbelievable job of just creating team and getting the new guys, not just the freshmen but the transfers, acclimated to what the program is about and what our team is going to be about,” Hubert Davis said.
The older guys take the younger ones to lunch. They get together at different players’ homes to play video games, sometimes engaging in intense tournaments.
Breakfast? Yep. Lunch? Often. Dinner? Even more often.
The Tar Heels have quickly gotten to know each other, and it has come naturally. Nothing forced.
“I’m really proud of RJ and I’m really proud of Armando, and this team is together because of those guys,” Carolina’s coach said.
“That came naturally, that came naturally,” Davis added. “It just did… This is something they took personally for themselves to be leaders and to integrate the new guys with the old guys and just create really good team chemistry.”
It helps that the new players are at Carolina on a mission: Ryan’s last season is one he’s approaching similarly to how Brady Manek did two years ago; Wojcik’s last go-around, too, and he wants to win at a place where his father was an assistant coach when he was born; Ingram almost picked UNC out of high school, instead spending two years at Stanford before transferring in the spring; Withers has ties to the state and wanted a new start after being a part of Louisville’s struggles: and Okonkwo got out of West Virginia after Bob Huggins was forced into retirement.
In addition, Cadeau wants to win, be on as big a stage as there is in college basketball, and get to the NBA at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later. High might understand his process will take longer, but UNC and what he can achieve in Chapel Hill is a perfect fit for him.
“There’s a desire to be good from different directions from the guys that were here last year and experienced two years ago and last year, from the guys coming in as transfers, and Zayden and Elliot coming in as freshmen,” Hubert Davis said. “So, there’s a sense of urgency and competitiveness and drive that’s coming from different directions but all meeting at the same place.”
Nine scholarship players from a year ago are gone, seven having transferred, but the new-look Heels have made considerable progress in one of the more important and underappreciated elements to having a high-achieving season: They like each other. A lot.
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