UNC ONLY BASKETBALL 2024-25 SEASON

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UNCRx85 said:
I'm squarely in the "writing's on the wall" camp. 3 out his 4 seasons will be spent on the NCAA tourney bubble. His 1st year was rough until we got fluky hot at the very end. That run led to massive expectations in year 2, which we failed to meet. Miserably. Year 3 was a good season that still left a lot to be desired - that ACCT loss to State was... gross. And we were clearly a tier or 2 below the elite teams last season and didn't really have a realistic chance at a title. And this year, yikes.

Excuses are for losers. Its ultimately the coach's responsibility to build the roster and have its production meet/exceed its potential. Good coaches do that consistently. Hubert did it for a few weeks in the spring of 2022. Sure, it could be argued we were > the sum of our parts last season, but we were pretty damn talented. The rest of his tenure has been average to below-average.

Program vibes aren't good. Perception isn't good. Recruiting momentum is gone. Board insiders at IC hinting that players (and their families) are losing trust in Hubert. Recruits seem to have already reached that point. We saw how big $ donors were quick to break the bank for Belichick in a way they never did for Mack. Hubert's seat is heating up. That brings uncertainty for the future, which recruits tend to not like. It's a self-sustaining spiral we've all seen before.

Had we completed the collapse to that depleted Baylor team or had Caleb missed just one of the ridiculous shots he hit vs. UCLA, this all looks much clearer.
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Amen to all of this. And the third paragraph definitely can't be ignored.

Us hiring Belichick has most definitely put a clock on Hubert Davis that was only kinda-sorta there 10 days ago. Even if we somehow run the table, none of this overall feels good.

And a reminder: We scraped to beat Georgia Tech:

  • At home
  • With them missing two starters
 
I'm so reluctant to be a critic of HD. Find it really hard, honestly. He was one of our most beloved players, played under Dean, had a lengthy NBA career, came back and helped Roy. A truly class act, a man of faith....just about every positive accolade you can bestow on a fellow man.

Similar to the Doherty hire, we put Hubert in charge because he was part of the family, ignoring that they both lacked head coaching experience. Tough ask for a first time head coach to take the reigns of one of the most demanding jobs in the world of basketball.
 
CRHeel94 said:
I'm so reluctant to be a critic of HD. Find it really hard, honestly. He was one of our most beloved players, played under Dean, had a lengthy NBA career, came back and helped Roy. A truly class act, a man of faith....just about every positive accolade you can bestow on a fellow man.

Similar to the Doherty hire, we put Hubert in charge because he was part of the family, ignoring that they both lacked head coaching experience. Tough ask for a first time head coach to take the reigns of one of the most demanding jobs in the world of basketball.
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The University will ultimately need to decide what it wants the basketball program to be going forward. Do they want to maintain the standard of excellence built over the last 60 years? Or do they want to keep hiring members of the family for all the feel-goods it provides? If you take an unbiased view of things, there's no "Carolina Family" without all the uh, you know... WINNING.

The way we built this thing is no longer viable in today's NIL/Portal era. And it's not going back to the way it was before. Adapt or become Indiana or UCLA, if we haven't already...
 
i'm pretty much an eternal optimist about my sportsball teams but HD is starting to lose me.

we just don't have the horses this year in the post. fatal flaw.

on our current trajectory, this staff will have engineered like 1.5 seasons of UNC-standard basketball during their 4 year tenure. not good enough.
 
My opinion is that our guards are pressing in an attempt to cover up the weakness inside.

It looks like the staff is trying to work with other lineups to cover this but unsuccessfully.

I just don't get why we are always cold in the first half. We out scored FLA by 6 in the second half, that should have been enough except for the ass kicking in the first 10 minutes.
 
4thgenheel said:
i'm pretty much an eternal optimist about my sportsball teams but HD is starting to lose me.

we just don't have the horses this year in the post. fatal flaw.

on our current trajectory, this staff will have engineered like 1.5 seasons of UNC-standard basketball during their 4 year tenure. not good enough.
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To the point about post players: this is Hubert’s 4th season, and during that time the only halfway decent true post player that he and his staff have brought in from either transfer portal or HS ranks is Jalen Washington. No post players on the radar in the upcoming recruiting class either.

To me, that goes well beyond the NIL/transfer portal excuses, or the excuse that no big man wanted to come to UNC while Bacot was here.
 
CRHeel94 said:
I'm so reluctant to be a critic of HD. Find it really hard, honestly. He was one of our most beloved players, played under Dean, had a lengthy NBA career, came back and helped Roy. A truly class act, a man of faith....just about every positive accolade you can bestow on a fellow man.

Similar to the Doherty hire, we put Hubert in charge because he was part of the family, ignoring that they both lacked head coaching experience. Tough ask for a first time head coach to take the reigns of one of the most demanding jobs in the world of basketball.
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Actually. Doherty did have one season as head coach at Notre Dame. Still, that was another bad hire because they refused to look outside the Carolina family.
 
The "it's the NIL/changing landscape" argument doesn't vibe with me, considering HD offered AJ 5+ million (matching BYU's offer), matched Cliff's offer last summer, along with offering more to Caleb than the others (he's yet to decide). Just look at UNC's offense, and ask yourself what makes it appealing to players. Guards don't get really good looks because there's not inside game and big men don't get good looks because they're only there to set the high-ball screen (and then scrap for whats left over after the guard shoots it).

It also doesn't vibe with me because this team lacks fundamentals on both ends of the court.
 
StoneColdHeel said:
Actually. Doherty did have one season as head coach at Notre Dame. Still, that was another bad hire because they refused to look outside the Carolina family.
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Yeah...fully aware. One season at ND is nearly not enough job experience to take on the pressure cooker of Carolina basketball.

The biggest challenge for any coach is moving from being an assistant to being a head coach. Being the decider and the face of the program is another animal, and like any challenging job has a learning curve. To have to do it under the intense scrutiny of a blue blood program is unreal.
 
donbosco said:
Like @grimes70, I am beginning to wonder if "The Carolina Way" is workable at a consistently winning and highly rated level anymore.

If that is really true then it is a sad commentary about so much more than this particular basketball team.
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I'm not sure I'd go that far....but it does need some tweaks.

And at the risk of getting things thrown at me...our neighbors in blue seem to have copied some things from the formula.
 
Heelsandeers said:
Welp. Still come out every game looking like they're playing with a ton of pressure

It’s only when there’s nothing left to lose that they look sharp and just play bball

Only to tighten up again when the game gets close and slows down. If that isn’t on coaching idk what is
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Playing?
 
2021 -2022 - Final Four, National Runner-up - Retired K twice, Finished 2nd in the ACC regular season
2022-2023 - Bad year - Pete Nance ended up not being the right fit. Decent recruiting class (3) -4-stars
2023-2024 - Great work in the portal. Regular Season ACC champs. Disappointing early tourney exit (it happens)
2024-2025 - Missed on needing one true big from the portal. I would be suprised if we don't finish Top3 in the league. If we do, we'll be in the tournament albeit by the slimmest of margins.

2 of Hubert's first 3 seasons have been successful. To think otherwise, is to have an incredibly short memory and/or ridiculous expectations. I remember in 2013-2015 when everyone wanted Roy fired. The game had passed him by. Couldn't recruit, couldn't put together a winning team. Then 2016 and 2017 happened.

Hubert very well might not end up being the guy, but to write him off at this point is silly. It was, certainly, a huge miss not bringing in a big-time big this year. We're a contender with the right big guy.

What I don't understand is how you can be down by +15 every first half and then mount an incredible comeback only to fall short in 3 big games. Coaching is part of it, but Hubert didn't miss a 1and1 3 different times. He didn't dribble the ball off his foot (Cadeau has had some awful late game TO's this year) or throw a pass at RJ's ankles. Did Hubert have the right guys in the last 3mins last night? Maybe not. We had to get defensive rebounds and we didn't.

I'll reserve judgement until the end of the year. Sitting on a current career record of 3-16 for 5th and 6th grade basketball as a coach might make me a bit more sympathetic.
 
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Think some of us are putting too much stock into these second half comebacks. How often do you see college football or basketball teams build a giant lead and then let off the gas while the other team goes for broke and chips away at the lead? Feel like that’s just human nature.

Point being: it doesn’t matter that we’re closing these massive deficits we constantly find ourselves in if we never complete the comeback and actually win.
 
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bassydude77 said:
2021 -2022 - Final Four, National Runner-up - Retired K twice, Finished 2nd in the ACC regular season
2022-2023 - Bad year - Pete Nance ended up not being the right fit. Decent recruiting class (3) -4-stars
2023-2024 - Great work in the portal. Regular Season ACC champs. Disappointing early tourney exit (it happens)
2024-2025 - Missed on needing one true big from the portal. I would be suprised if we don't finish Top3 in the league. If we do, we'll be in the tournament albeit by the slimmest of margins.

2 of the Hubert's first 3 seasons have been successful. To think otherwise, is to have an incredibly short memory and/or ridiculous expectations. I remember in 2013-2015 when everyone wanted Roy fired. The game had passed him by. Couldn't recruit, couldn't put together a winning team. Then 2016 and 2017 happened.

Hubert very well might not end up being the guy, but to write him off at this point is silly. It was, certainly, a huge miss not bringing in a big-time big this year. We're a contender with the right big guy.

What I don't understand is how you can be down by +15 every first half and then mount an incredible comeback only to fall short in 3 big games. Coaching is part of it, but Hubert didn't miss a 1and1 3 different times. He didn't dribble the ball off his foot (Cadeau has had some awful late game TO's this year) or throw a pass at RJ's ankles. Did Hubert have the right guys in the last 3mins last night? Maybe not. We had to get defensive rebounds and we didn't.

I'll reserve judgement until the end of the year. Sitting on a current career record of 3-16 for 5th and 6th grade basketball as a coach might make me a bit more sympathetic.
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That's a very kind portrait of Hubert's years at Carolina.

Another way of saying it...

2021 -2022 - Bubble team, NCAAT 8-seed, mediocre season salvaged by terrific end of season run
2022-2023 - Bad year, missed NCAAT
2023-2024 - Very good year, ACC Regular Season Champs, NCAAT 1-seed, early-ish NCAAT tourney exit
2024-2025 - Seemingly another bubble team, struggling against good teams, ACC performance & NCAAT TBD

He's had one very good regular season (23-24) and one exceptional end of season (21-22). Everything else thus far has been mediocre at an elite basketball program.

I'm not saying that we should fire him mid-season or anything, just that this season has to show some significant improvement or he's going to be on the verge of being dismissed.
 
The other thing I've been thinking about for HD is if he's given another year to turn it around...what happens on the NIL front?

We're going to lose some talent in this off-season, there's no doubt about it. And we don't really have much immediate impact talent inside to worry about losing or keeping. And our recruits aren't really the immediate impact type.

Which means we're going to have to do major work in the portal.

But what happens when HD says, "If you want me to turn this around, I need twice the NIL money I had last off-season. What I had last year wasn't enough."

Do you give him one last year to make a big change unless you're also going to give him major additional resources (read: NIL money) to make it happen? Or do you give him an extra year with no extra resources and simply let the chips fall where they may? If it's the latter, how does that play out from a PR perspective?
 
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