Just a couple of days after giving fans some hope of an improbable NCAA Tournament run, North Carolina came crashing back down to Earth, falling to No. 6 seed Ole Miss in a first-round matchup that looked a whole lot like the UNC team we got to know all too well during the regular season. The Heels got off to an awful start, and while they caught fire late, it wasn't quite enough to dig out of that early hole — sound familiar?
It does to Hubert Davis, too. But while the Carolina head coach is no doubt as sick of watching his team come out flat as anybody, he doesn't seem any closer to figuring out how to fix it. Which doesn't exactly bode well as questions swirl around his future at the helm of the program.
Everything Hubert Davis said after UNC's NCAA Tournament loss to Ole Miss
A tribute to RJ Davis, Tar Heel seniors
First thing's first: While Davis has plenty of questions to answer about what's gone wrong in Chapel Hill of late, he made sure to carve out some time during his postgame media availability to pay tribute to the trio of seniors on this Carolina roster, in particular star guard RJ Davis.
"Probably the thing that's initially going through my mind is this is the last time that I'll coach RJ, J-Wit, and Ty," Davis told reporters, per 247Sports, referring to RJ Davis, Jae'Lyn Withers and Ty Claude. "So just thinking about the seniors, thinking about how much I enjoyed coaching them and having relationships with them."
It's a disappointing end for a senior class that seemed to have so much promise when it helped spur a run to the national title game back in 2022. But Davis, in particular, deserves to be remembered as a true Tar Heel great, someone who always gave his all and made big shot after big shot even when there was precious little help around him.
No answers for maddening slow starts
Davis was the first to admit that Ole Miss "dominated" the Heels early in this game, the latest in an all too long line of slow starts that plagued this team all year. But while Davis was capable of identifying the problem, he didn't seem to have any ideas on how to fix it — in fact, he seemed to be surprised that it was still a problem at all.
"The whole game, that wasn't us the last two months," Davis said. "That was us the first four months, and I told them that at halftime. I said, 'I haven't seen this team since Clemson.' Against good teams like Ole Miss, it's just not sustainable."
That is technically true enough. But it also elides some very important context: While UNC hadn't dug itself an early lead in a while, that's mostly because it spent the ACC schedule post-Clemson blowout feasting on non-tournament competition. Once the opposition ramped back up a bit, this reverted to the same UNC team we saw for the last few months.
Vague about how best to attack the transfer portal this offseason
Maybe this is unfair so soon after a tough loss, but when asked about how he wants to approach a crucial offseason for his program, Davis didn't offer much of anything.
"That's something I have not thought about at all," Davis said. "My anticipation was for us to play extremely well today and win and play Iowa State on Sunday. So it being less than a half an hour, 45 minutes from a loss, that is something that I will have to think about, but I have not thought about it now, and I'm not going to think about it today."
Again, it's all well and good to be present in the moment, and to have confidence that your team's season isn't going to end any time soon. But the reality of college basketball today is that things move pretty fast, especially in the transfer portal; if Davis hasn't even given that a thought yet, he's already one step behind.