UNC is at a crossroads with Hubert Davis, but there's one replacement they must avoid

The North Carolina Tar Heels are a special college basketball program. UNC is one of the very best to ever do it, with a legacy that only a small handful of schools can hope to match. Coaches like Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. Players like Phil Ford, Michael Jordan and Tyler Hansbrough. Thirty-three regular season ACC championships, 18 ACC Tournament titles and six NCAA championships.

Before every UNC home game, the video boards inside the Dean Dome remind those in attendance of this legacy as these coaches, players and milestones are interspersed with an ecstasy-inducing highlight reel of powder blue jubilation. "This is Carolina basketball," the fans are told by none other than Michael Jordan himself. If you're in the crowd with over 20,000 other like-minded folks wearing Carolina blue, it's impossible not to get goosebumps.

In most seasons, that amazing feeling is a constant over the next two hours as the Heels run, shoot and dunk their way past whatever poor, overmatched foe is in front of them. Far too often recently, though, it hasn't taken long after the opening tip for that special feeling to dissipate.

Carolina has stumbled off its pedestal in recent years

The Heels have lost more than they're used to these last few years, and even when they've won, it hasn't been with the same unmistakable style that has been so emblematic of "The Carolina Way" over the decades. I attended a game three Saturdays ago in which UNC needed overtime to beat a Boston College team that is currently 16th in the ACC. That isn't supposed to happen.

The players are the ones that are on the court, and although I don't like the idea of piling on college kids, they certainly deserve their share of the blame for looking disinterested and disjointed at times. I'm also a firm believer that the buck stops with the man in charge though, and that man is Hubert Davis.

Coach Davis is as true a Tar Heel as there is. He played under Dean Smith for four years before being drafted by the New York Knicks. He left a studio job at ESPN in order to become Roy Williams' assistant, and he sat next to Roy for a decade before getting the call to replace him. UNC has always kept its head coaching hires within the Carolina family; sometimes that works, such as when athletic director Dick Baddour convinced Ol' Roy to leave Kansas and come back home, and sometimes it doesn't, such as when Matt Doherty was effectively run out of town after back-to-back years of missing the NCAA Tournament.

Davis has not been an abject disaster like Doherty was. He piloted one of the most joyous seasons in Carolina history when he led the Heels to a national runner-up finish as an 8-seed that included beating Mike Krzyzewski in the final home game of his career, then sending him into retirement by beating him again in the Final Four. He led the Heels to a 1-seed last year before losing a thriller to a very good Alabama team in the Sweet Sixteen.

The consistency that Carolina fans have come to expect has not been there though, and there's now four years of evidence to suggest that maybe, for whatever reason, Davis doesn't have what it takes to keep this program on top where it belongs. In 2022-23, UNC became the first team in history to miss the NCAA Tournament after being ranked No. 1 in the preseason. Barring a late-season surge that would be entirely inconsistent with how the team has played this year, they'll miss the Big Dance once again, this time after being ranked ninth when the season began.

Is it too late for Hubert Davis to turn things around?

Davis recently announced plans to hire a general manager for next season, a move that is long overdue in order to keep pace with the modern landscape of college athletics. At the same time, though, it feels like a bit of sleight of hand meant to distract from the fact that this team just does not play good basketball — a fact that can't be blamed on NIL or anything else that a general manager would handle. There's five-star talent on this team, but you'd never know it by the on-court product.

Carolina's fan base has grown understandably restless about the state of the program, but it remains to be seen if that will translate into moving on from Davis at the end of the year or if he will get another chance to prove himself. My money is on Davis getting one more shot, but in the event that he doesn't, it will kick off one of the most high-profile coaching searches of recent times. Who would the Heels pursue for one of the most coveted jobs in college basketball, and would they break tradition by going outside the Carolina family?

If the plan is to get back to the top of the mountain, which it always should be for a blue blood, then it's hard to imagine a UNC alum getting the call this time. Wes Miller, who lost out to Davis after Roy retired, has had middling success at Cincinnati, while Jerry Stackhouse was fired at the conclusion of last season after five years at Vanderbilt. (He's now an assistant with the Golden State Warriors.) They're the only two viable options to keep tradition alive.

But if Carolina extends the scope of its search beyond those who have called Chapel Hill home before, then the sky is the limit. Huge names such as Mark Few, Nate Oats and Jay Wright have been thrown about. Would any of them actually take the call? There's only one way to find out. No matter where Carolina's search takes them, though, there's one name that should be absolutely off-limits.

There's one coaching candidate Carolina should avoid at all costs

One name that has been suggested as a potential Davis replacement is Will Wade. College basketball fans might know Wade as the current coach at McNeese State, or remember him from one of his former gigs at Chattanooga, VCU or LSU.

Wade has had on-court success at every stop, compiling a .698 winning percentage in 351 career games. He's led his teams to the NCAA Tournament six times, but his off-court antics have overshadowed his resume: He was one of the main protagonists in the FBI-Adidas wiretapping scandal a few years back, the stain of which ultimately led to his termination at LSU.

That, more than anything else, is why he shouldn't be allowed anywhere near UNC. Wade's reputation was so low that when he was finally fired by the Tigers (on the day before Selection Sunday, no less), Sports Illustrated ran an obituary on his time in Baton Rouge with the headline "Years of Corruption and Enablement Lead to Shameful and Deserving End for Will Wade." Tell us how you really feel!

Wade has tried to rehabilitate his image since taking over at McNeese State, and there's no disputing that his 30-4 record last season was extremely impressive. Unlike back in 2017, college athletes are now able to be paid above the table, so many believe it's time to forgive and forget.

I'm not one of them, for a few reasons. First, every Carolina fan remembers the "paper classes" scandal that rocked the school a decade ago. Carolina narrowly avoided serious NCAA penalties as a result, so going forward, the school can't afford even a hint of impropriety, which is exactly what Wade would bring.

Secondly, though Wade's record is good, it's not like he's Bill Self or Tom Izzo. He's never coached a team to a Sweet Sixteen, and the one time LSU did make the second weekend during his tenure came with assistant coach Tom Benford at the helm while Wade was suspended. LSU is a major-conference school, but it's not exactly UNC when it comes to basketball. That's as close as he's gotten to the big-time, and there's no guarantee he'd be ready to deal with the expectations that would come with the gig.

The bottom line is that if Wade is the best Carolina can do, they'd be better off sticking with Davis and hoping he can turn it around with a GM and incoming five-star freshman Caleb Wilson in place next year. If athletic director Bubba Cunningham gets wind that he could land a big fish, one who doesn't come with so much baggage, maybe that calculus changes.