Hubert Davis Catch-all

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Calheel said:
1. I am not sure that our 3 point defense is that much better. Louisville was bricking at various points in the game -- something it does frequently on the road. McNealy missed several wide open threes. We didn't have the same luck with Okouri at Stanford, Boopie at SMU, and that Eminem looking dude for Cal. As Roy always said, sometimes everything looks better when the ball goes (or doesn't go) in the basket.

2. The expectations for a coach of a non-elite program are necessarily less than of an elite program. Hubert is measured on a totally different scale and time table than Dean. Hubert has advantages over the competition that Dean could only dream of having in the 1960s.
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That's true that the advantages weren't the same. It's true Hubert didn't start off under probation with recruiting restrictions. He also didn't have the direct pipeline to the talent in New York and surrounds that Dean did and has a lot more competition for talent. At that time UCLA and Kentucky were the only programs who recruited nationally on a regular basis and we were starting to along with Indiana. That competition is why you don't see the undefeated teams and why UCLA's 88 game win streak is unfathomable. I think you greatly misunderstand where the advantage was.
 
heel79 said:
We played our ass off in defense. I had great seats. Yea the gotta couple if good looks. It's also possible that smu Stanford and cal.hitvsimevtuff shots.

22-6
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In the three point game today, there are days when the opposing team just goes off-for sure
 
Calheel said:
Admittedly, year 2, but ...

www.ncaa.com

Mike Davis admits he wasn’t ready at Indiana. But he’s ready to prove himself at Detroit Mercy

Mike Davis has had a long coaching journey, but he's learned a lot along the way.
www.ncaa.com www.ncaa.com

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Wow, I'd forgotten about him. Good case in counter-point. I think he's the extreme exception, but I understand that the argument can be made that HD is as well. But to my broader point, the hyperbolic crap of him being a terrible coach does not help... it just causes people to dig in and not listen to each other.
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
But to my broader point, the hyperbolic crap of him being a terrible coach does not help... it just causes people to dig in and not listen to each other.
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This He may not be"up to our standard' But he sure as hell is not horrible, clueless etc
In my opinion the Masters are the best at the Psychological challenge of getting a bunch of 18 yr old knuckleheads bought in perfectly Maybe he excels at that one day-hey maybe not ?
It use to be if you were Coach-you were sort of G-D. Today you just are their employer for a year or two
Maybe he needs to learn how to cuss out players (No, he won't )lol
But he knows a hell of a lot about basketball
 
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NYCBlueBlood said:
I get annoyed by all the posts I see saying HD is a terrible coach... or not a college level coach. And I know most are not saying that, but the posts are constant (at least over on IC). This sort of hyperbole does not help. There is absolutely no world where a coach who took a team to the NC game in his first year of coaching is a terrible coach who should not be coaching at the college level.

Now this does not necessarily make him a great coach. Maybe he's a bit of a one hit wonder who peaked in his very first season. But terrible coaches do not make it to the Final 4. Especially not by beating your archrival in the Final Four with 4 first round draft picks to your zero.
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I don't think he is a terrible coach. I think he has just been too inconsistent so far to be the coach for a program like Carolina. Maybe they are going to make another run at the end of this season and do well in the tournament again. There's just been too much up and down seasons for me so far, and even a lot of up and down play during the season itself.
 
A couple thoughts:
-my thinking a few weeks ago after looking at recent history at blue bloods was that if this team made the tourney, HD would be safe. This team is making the tourney (last night's win pretty much guarantees that). If they knock off Clemson and win a ACC tourney game, they should be a 5 seed (that assumes a VT win, Duke loss). Thus HD is safe. And yes, I know that's not the standard many expect, but he is not getting fired.
-HD was slow to adjust in making some changes to the program structure (GM, analytics, etc), but to his credit he eventually relented. Hard to tell if those program changes have worked. Think this off-season will be a big test for Tanner.
-Is HD a good coach? He's definitely not a bad coach. Can he be a great coach? He has been able to beat some really good teams. He has also lost to some not so good teams. Ive always thought mediocre programs play to the level of the opponent (get up for the good ones, relax against the bad ones). So in that sense we have been mediocre which fits in well with the inconsistency. Will he be a great coach? Probably not. I will keep saying it til I'm but in the face...we threw a first time HC into a pressure cooker of a job. Five years in, this is a juncture where the learning curve is not as steep.
-Something to think about...and Ive hinted at this somewhat cryptically. I wouldn't be surprised if HD walks away at some point. Not because he's asked to step down. He's definitely a competitor and has deep love for Carolina, but the current transactional nature of college basketball doesn't seem to mesh with some of his core values.
 
duluoz said:
And yet, people like you don’t recognize how it’s a completely different sport, again. Dean’s first 5 years are very relevant here.

You’re applying your very subjective standards and passing them off as objective, and moving goalposts where you see fit, just to vent your frustrations with HD. And dismissing whatever doesn’t serve you along the way.
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What goalposts have I moved? I said before the season that in my personal opinion (see this is an acknowledgement that my standard is subjective, not objective), to be convinced that HD is the right guy to lead the program moving forward, I wanted to see 2 out of 3 of a top 4 NCAAT seed, a top 3 ACC finish, and a S16 or better. Those are arbitrary data points meant to approximate having a top 15 season; sort of what, historically, should be the baseline for a "normal" UNC season. I have not wavered from those goals at all. So not sure how that equates to "moving the goalposts."

What is objectively true is that Hubert has not met the standard of the program over the preceding 50 years - a program that indisputably was one of the best in college bball over that time. You can argue, if you want, that the standard set over those 50 years is no longer attainable, or that we shouldn't be striving for that standard any more. But you can't really credibly argue that what we've seen the last five years, so far, meets that standard.

I would be interested to know how you would complete these open-ended prompts:

"My hopes/expectations for the UNC basketball program are _____________________________"

"I believe Hubert Davis is the right person to get UNC basketball where I want it to be because ______________________________"
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
Wow, I'd forgotten about him. Good case in counter-point. I think he's the extreme exception, but I understand that the argument can be made that HD is as well. But to my broader point, the hyperbolic crap of him being a terrible coach does not help... it just causes people to dig in and not listen to each other.
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Mike Davis ended his coaching career at 1-31 at Detroit Mercy. I guess he needed to "go git yourself a team."
 
Enigma94 said:
I think a lot of our disagreement stems from the fact that you are judging Davis based on efficiency metrics and I'm judging it based on actual wins and losses. As of today Louisville is 13 spots ahead of us on Kenpom, even after we beat them last night and have beaten a much more impressive roster of teams this year. So excuse me if I don't care where Kenpom had us ranked. Point being, the teams we lost to were good teams and we beat everyone else leading up to the last half of the season winning at an 80% clip and humiliating our hated rival and their undead koach. You can call that a bad season, but I will never agree with it.
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I'm just using efficiency metrics because they are not, like wins and losses, subject to the wildly varying strength of schedule that college bball teams play. Focusing only on total wins and losses without any other context (like looking at who we played, or how utterly embarrassing the losses were) is a great way to get an extremely misleading picture. You are giving credit for stacking meaningless wins against terrible teams in a historically bad ACC, which is a pointless exercise when judging performance at a school like UNC.

Also, note that I very clearly didn't call it a "bad season." I said it was a really bad 2/3 of a season, followed by a brilliant final third. It is, as I noted, very reminiscent of NC State's 2024 season where they were bad most of the season then had a transcendent postseason that surely made the season very memorable for their fans. And also somewhat reminiscent of the last time an 8-sed UNC went to the FF in 2000. I don't want you or anyone else to give up the special memories from late February/March of that season. I'm not giving mine up. But if we have to rely on seasons where we get an 8 seed and make a miracle tournament run as the "good" seasons for our program, that isn't a very sustainable model. (Note that the 2000 UNC season and 2024 NC State season were not indicative of programs in good shape.) The best sign of an elite program is that they are consistently playing well enough in the regular season to earn high NCAAT seeds. Focusing too heavily on tournament results is fool's gold.
 
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rodoheel said:
But if we have to rely on seasons where we get an 8 seed and make a miracle tournament run as the "good" seasons for our program, that isn't a very sustainable model. (Note that the 2000 UNC season and 2024 NC State season were not indicative of programs in good shape.) The best sign of an elite program is that they are consistently playing well enough in the regular season to earn high NCAAT seeds. Focusing too heavily on tournament results is fool's gold.
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yea
Footnote
Tournament results are a big deal
 
Here's something else I'd be interested in seeing the responses to.

Teams like Houston. Arizona, UConn, Purdue, and Duke have been able to sustain pretty consistent success over the last few years, even in this "new" era of more player movement and roster turnover, and in some of those cases even as they go through coaching changes. What do you think is allowing those programs to more consistently sustain success when compared to UNC? Do they have advantages over us that we can't match, and if so why? Should we strive to match or exceed the standard those programs are setting, and if so, is keeping Hubert as the coach consistent with doing so?
 
mpaer said:
yea
Footnote
Tournament results are a big deal
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Of course they are. What I'm saying is that they are not as predictive of future success - or as indicative of an elite program - as consistent regular-season excellence.
 
rodoheel said:
Here's something else I'd be interested in seeing the responses to.

Teams like Houston. Arizona, UConn, Purdue, and Duke have been able to sustain pretty consistent success over the last few years, even in this "new" era of more player movement and roster turnover, and in some of those cases even as they go through coaching changes. What do you think is allowing those programs to more consistently sustain success when compared to UNC? Do they have advantages over us that we can't match, and if so why? Should we strive to match or exceed the standard those programs are setting, and if so, is keeping Hubert as the coach consistent with doing so?
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It would help if you'd define consistency. Purdue and Arizona have had some embarrassing flameouts and bad seasons in the last ten years. Connecticut has had two championships but several years they didn't make the tournament and several others they lost in the first or second round. Duke has been consistently good but haven't done much past the Elite Eight with better talent over those years than numerous NBA teams.
 
finesse said:
It would help if you'd define consistency. Purdue and Arizona have had some embarrassing flameouts and bad seasons in the last ten years. Connecticut has had two championships but several years they didn't make the tournament and several others they lost in the first or second round. Duke has been consistently good but haven't done much past the Elite Eight with better talent over those years than numerous NBA teams.
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I'm just talking about the last 5 seasons, since Hubert has been here, which roughly coincides with the "wide open NIL/portal" era.

In that time, those programs I listed have earned the following NCAAT seeds (last one, for this year, is just assumed based on current projection from Bracket Matrix):

  • Duke 2, 5, 4, 1, 1
  • Purdue: 3, 1, 1, 4, 2
  • Arizona: 1, 2, 2, 4, 1
  • UConn: 5, 4, 1, 8, 1
  • Houston: 5, 1, 1, 1, 2
These terms are earning top 5 seeds, often 1 or 2 seeds, every year (or almost every year in UConn's case - and of course they won two titles in this stretch). Like UNC used to do fairly consistently as well. That, to me, is the sign of an elite program; despite having a lot of roster turnover every year, they are consistently putting a top 10, or at worst top 20, team on the court.

How are they doing that, when UNC cannot, in an era of such heavy roster turnover? Do they have advantages that we can't hope to match? If not, how can we get to the point where we're doing the same thing?
 
rodoheel said:
Here's something else I'd be interested in seeing the responses to.

Teams like Houston. Arizona, UConn, Purdue, and Duke have been able to sustain pretty consistent success over the last few years, even in this "new" era of more player movement and roster turnover, and in some of those cases even as they go through coaching changes. What do you think is allowing those programs to more consistently sustain success when compared to UNC? Do they have advantages over us that we can't match, and if so why? Should we strive to match or exceed the standard those programs are setting, and if so, is keeping Hubert as the coach consistent with doing so?
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I think we're still in a period of figuring things out.

This new era isn't that old. I don't think it's a sure thing that Hubert won't be the guy. You hate to cut a guy lose who is about to put it all together.
 
rodoheel said:
Of course, but are there signs that Hubert is about to put it all together? Would you bet, right now, on next year's team being a 1-2 seed?
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I wouldn't bet on any team in the country to be a 1 or 2 seed next year. What kind of sucker bet is that?
 
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