Did Hubert Davis play at North Carolina? Tar Heels coach was a star guard for Dean Smith

Though its program patriarch was a relative outsider before arriving in Chapel Hill, North Carolina men’s basketball has been defined over the past 25 years for coaching hires with ties to the university.

The program, as it’s often stated, is a family.

Following Dean Smith’s retirement after the 1996-97 season, Bill Guthridge, Smith’s assistant for 30 years, was chosen to succeed the legendary coach. After Guthridge retired three years later, the Tar Heels turned to former player Matt Doherty. When Doherty resigned after three seasons, North Carolina native, North Carolina graduate and former Tar Heels assistant Roy Williams made his long-awaited return home.

Once Williams abruptly retired in 2021 after winning three national championships in 18 seasons at his alma mater, he left behind a sizable void that history had shown wouldn’t be easy to fill.

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Faced with the high-stakes decision of who would replace Williams, North Carolina yet again turned to one of its own.

For nearly a decade, Hubert Davis had been an assistant under Williams, putting him on staff for three ACC regular-season championships and, most notably, a national championship in 2017.

In just his first season as head coach, he overcame an underwhelming regular season by helping guide the Tar Heels to the national championship game, where they lost to Kansas. That run included a Final Four victory against archrival Duke that ended the Blue Devils’ national title dreams in the final season of outgoing coach Mike Krzyzewski’s career.

This season, Davis’ third, North Carolina enters its game Saturday against Duke at 17-4 and ranked No. 3 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll.

His connections to the university and its men’s basketball program, however, go much deeper than his time on the Tar Heels’ bench.

Here’s everything you need to know about Hubert Davis’ North Carolina career:

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Did Hubert Davis play at North Carolina?

Long before he sat alongside Williams on the North Carolina sideline, Davis was a star player for the Tar Heels.

Davis played at the university from 1988-92, though his time in Chapel Hill very nearly ended before it could even begin, according to Williams, who was an assistant at the school while it was recruiting Davis.

“In 1987-88, I went with Coach Smith into Hubert Davis’ home,” Williams said, according to Davis’ biography on the North Carolina athletics website. “Coach Smith said, ‘I don’t know if you’re ever going to be able to play here, Hubert, and I don’t want to do this.’ I got in the car with Coach and I said, ‘Coach, I think he’ll play more than you think he will because I think he’s so competitive and so driven.’ Hubert told Coach Smith, ‘You’ll never know unless you give me a chance.’ Coach Smith a couple days later called him and said, ‘I listened to what you said and I’m going to offer you a scholarship to North Carolina.’ Hubert committed to Coach Smith right then.”

Over his four seasons at North Carolina, Davis’ teams went 102-37, won the 1989 and 1991 ACC Tournaments, and advanced all the way to the 1991 Final Four.

A 6-foot-5 guard, Davis scored 1,615 points over his 137 collegiate games, an average of 11.8 points per contest. In those games, he shot 43.5% from 3-point range, which is still a program record. His play peaked during his senior season in 1991-92, when he averaged 21.4 points per game and scored at least 30 points in four contests. That included a career-high 35 points on March 8, 1992 against No. 1 Duke, the eventual national champion. That year, he was a second-team all-ACC selection.

Though he missed out on North Carolina’s 1993 national championship by a year, he was instrumental in helping the team reach the 1991 Final Four. He scored 19 points against Temple in the Elite Eight that year and had 25 points in a narrow loss in the Final Four against Kansas, which was coached by, interestingly enough, Williams.

On the heels of his outstanding senior season, Davis was selected by the New York Knicks with the No. 20 overall pick in the 1992 NBA Draft. He played with the Knicks, Toronto Raptors, Dallas Mavericks, Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons and New Jersey Nets over the course of a 12-year NBA career in which he averaged 8.2 points per game and appeared in the 1994 NBA Finals while a member of the Knicks.

After his playing career, Davis worked as a college basketball analyst for ESPN and served as a panelist on the network’s “College GameDay” program. He ultimately left that position to join Williams’ staff in 2012.

Hubert Davis stats

Though Davis wasn’t an immediate impact player at North Carolina — he averaged 3.3 points in 7.1 minutes per game for a star-studded 1988-89 team that featured, among others, J.R. Reid and Rick Fox — he went on to become a regular starter by his junior season and a full-fledged star by his senior year.

Here’s a look at Davis’ year-by-year production at North Carolina:

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Hubert Davis high school

Though he was born in Winston-Salem, Davis was raised in Burke, Virginia, about 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.

He starred at Lake Braddock High School, where he was football teammates with future Olympic hurdles gold medalist Allen Johnson. Though their time at the school didn’t overlap, future US Soccer and North Carolina star Mia Hamm also attended Lake Braddock.

As a senior, Davis averaged 28 points per game and attracted the attention of several top colleges across the country. He eventually chose North Carolina, where his uncle, Walter, was a star from 1973-77 before going on to become a six-time NBA all-star.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Did Hubert Davis play basketball at North Carolina?