CHAPEL HILL — Signs emerged across the years that perhaps ultimately, Roy Williams preferred Hubert Davis to replace him as men’s basketball coach at North Carolina.
The Tar Heels elevated Davis on Monday from his assistant coaching role to be Williams’ successor. He will be formally introduced during a 2 p.m. news conference Tuesday at the Smith Center.
Athletics director Bubba Cunningham said the search he would be leading with school chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz would move quickly, and it did, with North Carolina naming the 50-year-old Davis to the post four days after Williams’ stunning revelation of his retirement.
All the way back to nine years ago, when Williams hired Davis away from his ESPN gig as a television analyst, he said then he believed Davis possessed the qualities of an eventual head coach, despite Davis, the former standout guard for the Tar Heels and 12-year NBA veteran, having no previous experience in college coaching.
Williams joked that day in 2012, in his classic aw-shucks manner, that he could’ve been charged with stalking in his pursuit of Davis. Williams said then he repeatedly drove past Davis’s home in the area, in the hope of catching him in person and approaching him about joining the Tar Heels staff.
Williams later made Davis the coach of North Carolina’s junior varsity team, another indicator that Davis maybe — or likely — was being groomed for significant responsibilities down the line. After all, as a young assistant under the iconic Dean Smith, Williams served as JV coach for the Tar Heels, a developmental job he considered invaluable to his growth.
Cunningham said on Thursday night of last week, hours after Williams delivered the surprising news of his retirement, that Williams openly had shared his input about the future of the North Carolina program and the direction the Hall of Fame coach favored.
Why Hubert?: Five reasons UNC tapped Davis as its next coach
“I’m putting a lot of load on he and the chancellor’s shoulders,” Williams said Thursday, referring to Cunningham, “because I’m giving my opinion very strongly about what I want to happen with the program.”
Moments later that day, Williams said of Davis and Tar Heels director of player development Eric Hoots: “I think they’re the only people that can love this university as much as I do.”
In choosing Davis, who turns 51 next month, North Carolina stayed in the proverbial family tree rooted in Smith’s teachings over the last six decades.
The nephew of Walter Davis, the former North Carolina standout and NBA All-Star, Hubert Davis, played for the Tar Heels under Smith from 1988-92, and has worked under Williams as an assistant coach for nine seasons.
“I am honored and humbled to be given the opportunity to lead this program,” Davis said Monday in a statement. “I would not be here without coach Dean Smith, coach Bill Guthridge and coach Roy Williams. They taught me so much, and I’m eager to walk their path in my shoes and with my personality. I also would not be here without chancellor Guskiewicz and Bubba Cunningham. I appreciate their faith in me and I look forward to working closely with them.
“I love this university. I played here, I earned my degree here, I fell in love with my wife here, I got married here, I moved here after I retired from the NBA and I have raised my family here. I am proud to lead this team, and I can’t wait for all that comes next.”
Davis, a native of Burke, Va., played in 137 career games for North Carolina. The Tar Heels went 102-37 during that stretch, claiming the 1989 and 1991 Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament titles and reaching the 1991 Final Four, where he pumped in 25 points in a loss to Kansas, then coached by Williams.
Davis scored 20 or more points in 23 games, and still holds the North Carolina school record for career 3-point percentage (at 43.5 percent). He supplied 21.4 points per game and earned second-team All-ACC honors during his senior season.
He was a first-round selection by the New York Knicks with the 20th pick in the 1992 NBA Draft, and played in the league for 12 years. He owns the second-highest career 3-point percentage in NBA history (at 44.1 percent).
Davis worked with ESPN for seven years as an analyst and co-host of the College GameDay show, before Williams recruited him back to Chapel Hill to join North Carolina in an assistant coaching capacity.
“Hubert Davis is the best leader we can possibly have for our men’s basketball program,” Cunningham said Monday in a statement. “He teaches student-athletes on and off the court. He inspires his fellow staff members. He is strongly committed to family. He has a tenacious, burning desire to be the best he can possibly be. We witnessed that when he was a player, a broadcaster and an assistant coach, and I have no doubt he will ensure that our student-athletes and program will be the best they can be, as well.”
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Times-News: Signs were there that Roy Williams favored Hubert Davis to become UNC basketball coach
