North Carolina has made a “leadership change” in its men’s basketball program, which is to say, UNC Athletics has finally fired Hubert Davis.
Shocking, this wasn’t.
Davis averaged 25 wins a year and took Carolina to a national championship game, but that was four years ago, which in Chapel Hill might as well have been never.
They don’t play basketball at North Carolina to just win 25 games a year.
Couple of things at play here: one, for the first time ever, there’s no obvious heir apparent from within the Carolina family ready to take the job.
The Dean Smith era: over.
Two: UNC Athletics is running a significant deficit, and that was before the dumb commitment to Bill Belichick in football.
Otherwise, you’d assume they’d have their pick of candidates, because UNC Basketball is one of the best coaching jobs in all of sports, and on a short list of the top two or three in college basketball.
Without access to ready cash, UNC isn’t necessarily going to be able to buy out Todd Golden at Florida ($16 million buyout), Tommy Lloyd at Arizona ($11 million buyout), Mark Byington at Vanderbilt ($10 million buyout), Dusty May at Michigan ($7 million buyout).
Of note: Dan Hurley at UConn has a mere $4 million buyout.
Intriguing.
Also intriguing: UNC only paid Davis $3.05 million for the 2025-2026 season, which is about what Virginia Tech is paying Mike Young.
They’re not going to steal one of the top guys for nothing, which it seems is what they have to offer.
Plus, Carolina owes Davis a $5.3 million golden parachute.
Those things are typically spaced out.
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Chris Graham
