Hubert Davis was named the 20th head coach of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball program on April 5, 2021. Davis became the fourth former Tar Heel player to become UNC’s head coach and the first Black head coach in Carolina men’s basketball history.

Davis played for Dean Smith at Carolina from 1988-92 and was an assistant coach on Roy Williams’ UNC staff from 2012-21. He played a key role coaching, recruiting and scouting and was the head coach of the UNC junior varsity program, a position Williams held before becoming the head coach at Kansas in 1988, for six seasons from 2013-19.

In his nine seasons on the bench with Williams, the Tar Heels played in eight NCAA Tournaments, advanced to the Final Four and national championship games in 2016 and 2017 and won the NCAA title in 2017. The Tar Heels went 228-95, including 107-60 in Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season play, winning the regular-season ACC title in 2016, 2017 and 2019 and an ACC Tournament title in 2016.

Carolina earned three No. 1 seeds and a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament in those nine seasons. The four-year run from 2016-19 was the best four-year NCAA seed average in UNC basketball history.

Davis helped coach 14 players who have played in the NBA, including 10 first-round draft picks – Cole Anthony, Tony Bradley, Reggie Bullock, P.J. Hairston, Justin Jackson, Brice Johnson, Cameron Johnson, Nassir Little, Day’Ron Sharpe and Coby White. Brice Johnson and Jackson were consensus first-team All-America and first-team All-ACC selections; Jackson was the 2017 ACC Player of the Year and Cameron Johnson earned first-team All-ACC honors.

Jackson and Cameron Johnson rank one-two in UNC single-season history in three-pointers. Johnson transferred to UNC from Pittsburgh and blossomed into the 11th pick in the first round of the 2019 NBA Draft. Davis also coached Marcus Paige, who earned first-team All-America honors as a sophomore in 2014 and set the UNC career record with 299 three-pointers, and Joel Berry II, the 2017 Final Four Most Outstanding Player.

Anthony set the ACC record for most points in a college debut and had the second-highest single-season scoring average by a Tar Heel freshman. White set the UNC single-season record for most threes by a freshman and became the seventh pick in the first round of the 2019 NBA Draft.

Prior to beginning his coaching career, Davis worked for seven years with ESPN as an analyst and co-host of the College GameDay program.

Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., Davis grew up in Burke, Va., where he attended Lake Braddock High School, the same high school UNC and US Soccer star Mia Hamm attended. Davis was a high school football teammate of future Olympic 110 hurdles gold medalist Allen Johnson.

Davis played in 137 games as a Tar Heel from 1988-92, during which time UNC went 102-37, won the 1989 and 1991 ACC Tournaments and played in the 1991 Final Four. He scored 1,615 points, an average of 11.8 per game. He still holds the UNC record for career three-point percentage at .435 (197 of 453). He scored in double figures 80 times with 23 games scoring 20 or more points.

He scored in double figures in each of his last eight NCAA Tournament games, averaging 18.5 points in those games. That included 19 against Temple in the 1991 NCAA East Regional final and 25 against Kansas (coached by Williams) in the 1991 Final Four.

Davis averaged 21.4 points and earned second-team All-ACC honors as a senior. He scored in double figures in 32 of 33 games that season, including 20 games with 20 or more points and 30 or more in four games. He netted a career-high 35 points at Duke on March 8, 1992. That 35-point game was part of a seven-game stretch late in the season in which he averaged 28.7 points.

The New York Knicks selected Davis with the 20th pick in the first round of the 1992 NBA Draft. He played 12 seasons in the NBA, scoring 5,583 points, an average of 8.2 per contest. He made 728 three-point field goals and is currently third in NBA history in three-point percentage at .441.

Davis averaged double-figure scoring in four different seasons – a career-high 11.1 with Dallas in 1997-98 and with the Knicks in 1993-94 (11.0), 1994-95 (10.0) and 1995-96 (10.7). He scored a career-high 32 points twice – as a second-year pro with the Knicks vs. Minnesota and in 2000 with Dallas against Seattle.

In 1993-94, he was fourth on the Knicks in scoring behind Patrick Ewing, John Starks and Charles Oakley as New York won 57 games and advanced to the NBA Finals, where they took Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Kenny Smith to seven games (Doc Rivers and Greg Anthony were also Knicks that season).

He shot 40 percent or better from three-point range in eight seasons, including 1999-2000, when he led the NBA with a career-best 49.1 percent as a Maverick. Davis shot 80 percent or better from the free throw line nine times. He connected on 83.7 percent of his career free throw attempts.

Davis played for NBA head coaches Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Jim Cleamons, Leonard Hamilton, Doug Collins, Rick Carlisle and Larry Brown. His NBA teammates included Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Ewing, Michael Finley, Richard Hamilton, Michael Jordan, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Rivers.

Davis graduated from UNC in 1992 with a degree in criminal justice. He and his wife, Leslie, have three children – Elijah, Gracie and Micah. Elijah will be playing basketball this season at the University of Lynchburg.

Davis’s uncle, Walter, starred at UNC from 1973-77 and was a six-time NBA All-Star. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year in 1978 with the Phoenix Suns, who retired his jersey.

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