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CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Hubert Davis met with the media Tuesday to discuss his team winning the East Regional championship and advancing to the Final Four where the Tar Heels will face Duke on Saturday in New Orleans.
Davis was asked about Caleb Love, Armando Bacot, and Brady Manek, about his team blocking out the noise this week, defensive improvement, his Final Four experience as a player, that UNC and Duke are actually playing on this stage, and so much more.
Above is video of Davis’ presser and below are some notes and pulled quotes:
*Davis spent nine seasons as an assistant coach under Roy Williams, for six of those years, including a seventh in which there was no formal team because of COVID, he was the JV coach. So, this season wasn’t entirely his first as a head coach of any kind, though it’s hard to find many similarities. Yet, Davis said Tuesday that experience helped him in his current post.
“Not necessarily the style, I think the experience for seven years of being the head coach of the JV program, put me in a position to make decisions,” Davis said. “Obviously it was at a much lesser scale, (but) you’re still making substitutions, you’re still making play calls, you’re still putting together practice plans and running practice, you’re still dealing with individuals and personalities and relationships.
“So, I think those things definitely translate that have put me in a position to be familiar with things that I need to be thinking about as a head coach. Really, I don’t know where I’d be without that experience.”
*Davis has said many times over the last several months Brady Manek was a great fit for the program and this team from the outset. But it sometimes takes players a while to get comfortable taking big shots and talking on the court. At what point did Davis see that comfort in Manek’s game fully come out.
And, how did Manek’s prior experience being in big moments make the process so much easier for him?
“With Brady, the thing that I really liked was one, his experience, and two, his experience in the Big 12,” Davis said. “I just think his ability playing against Baylor, playing against Kansas – at Kansas, at Baylor, at Texas, those are things I thought could translate to playing in this conference and playing in this program.
“Honestly, the things I know about him now I didn’t know before he got here on campus: I knew that he was a successful player, I knew that he could really shoot the basketball; I did not know that he was an outstanding passer, I did not know that instinctively he’s just brilliant in terms of where to be on the floor and the plays that he needs to make.
“I didn’t know that he was going to be such an unbelievable teammate and person to coach, and I didn’t know that his family is just beautiful. And so, those are things I found out, and it was a home run.”
*Davis calls more set plays than Roy Williams did, but he also gives his guys plenty of time to run freelance. What is the balance in when to let them go freelance and when to call a set play?
“I really love the decision making of our players,” Davis said. “I want them to be instinctive, I want them to use their gifts and talents out there on the floor. I don’t want them to be robots, I want them to be basketball players.
“I tell them that I call plays not for a play to be run, I call a play to put them in some form of organization to allow them to use their gifts and talents out there on the floor. If I call a certain play and you want to break that play because the defense is playing you in such a way that you feel like it dictates you doing something else, I love that, I encourage that, and I hope for that…
“There are times I will reign it in and say, “This is specifically what I want.’ I’ll give you an example: In the St. Peter’s game, we started the game from an offensive standpoint really well. We were attacking the basket through post and penetration – I really liked it. And then for a four-minute stretch in the first half, we went away from that and started shooting outside jump shots off zero and one passes.
“So, we got into the huddle and said, ‘Guys, that’s not it. I love you guys shooting jump shots, we’re a great outside shooting team, but just remember what’s allowed us to get success.’ So I said, ‘Next time down, no quick jump shots, we’ve got to get the ball inside.”
*UNC and Duke have never met in the NCAA Tournament, a strange and almost unthinkable truth that will no longer be the case when they battle in the Final Four this weekend. But in 1991, they were very close to playing each other in the national championship game, only UNC didn’t do its part.
The Blue Devils upset undefeated defending national champion UNLV in the second game of the national semifinals, and in the first one, Carolina lost to Roy Williams and Kansas. Davis was a junior on that team. He played 31 minutes scoring 25 points on 9-for-16 shooting, including 2-for-4 from three-point range, with five rebounds, and an assist.
The thing is, as close as the rivals were to meeting for the ultimate prize, they didn’t discuss it that week at all.
“That was not even talked about with Coach Smith,” Davis said, referring to Carolina’s legendary coach Dean Smith. “It would be a waste of time to think the possible matchup that we could play Duke in the final in 1991.
“We were playing Kansas. Our focus and our attention was on Kansas, and we didn’t play our best game and Kansas won. There was no thought, no time, I don’t have any memory, and I know that we spent no time thinking about the possible matchup.”
*Stay with THI for more coverage from Davis’ presser.
