Being in an unprecedented situation means that it’s tough to know how to handle every twist and turn. Friday’s news about Tommy Lloyd staying at Arizona is admittedly a 90 degree curve.
So, let’s all take a breath and state some actual truths about the current situation for Carolina so we can reset where things are.
Moving on from Hubert Davis was not a mistake
Unfortunately, this has nothing to do with how you or I think about how he was as a coach, nor about whether this is solely about Caleb Wilson’s injury. Ask anyone in the Tar Heel Blog
Slack and they will spend a long time telling you about how I was the most annoying about sticking up for Davis—to the point where I had room to crow during the highest moments of the season post-Wilson injury. Even after the VCU loss, I really didn’t think he was going to be let go and I was perfectly fine accepting that just a really weird series of events was just too much to overcome for any coach.
The problem is, I don’t contribute hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to UNC. I wish I did.
The loss to VCU crystallized a lot of issues to the people that do, because it wasn’t just the loss. I outlined how that loss brought how a lot of his tenure was marked with “if only.” The people who are responsible for funding Carolina’s NIL and revenue share brought back all of these, and made it very clear that if Davis stayed he was going to get less money than he got for a roster this year. Their reasoning, “If this is what it looks like without Wilson and Wilson is going to the NBA, this just isn’t what Carolina Basketball is.” Sure, he had another five-star coming in, but as a point guard he was going to need a completely different setup around him, and the likelihood of being able to field as good a team this season just wasn’t high.
In short—the conversation about whether or not Davis was a good coach had long been lost. Instead, the people who provide the necessary life blood for the sport had decided he wasn’t a good coach for Carolina. Once that had been decided, regardless of who ends up being selected, leadership had to move on. You’ve seen it in the numbers floating out for how much they’ll pay for a coach and for a team, which is significantly higher than what they were doing under Davis. Trust in him had been lost, and when that happens you have to move on.
Again, I don’t like it and it sucks for multiple reasons—but sometimes the right decisions suck.
The Transfer Portal as a whole isn’t just two weeks long
A lot of the worry and discussion about Carolina’s future coach has centered on the fact that the Transfer Portal opens up on Tuesday and only runs for two weeks.
Folks, the portal is opening for players to put their name in on Tuesday and that runs for two weeks—but they can declare for a school well after that period. Not to mention, the rule exists that a separate 15-day portal opens up when a head coach leaves a school for those affected players.
So the window to sign a player isn’t just two weeks, it’s basically until the start of the next school year. Of course, the concern is that power programs are going to run to the market, flood it with money for the best players, and by the time Carolina chooses their next coach there won’t be any decent player left even if they can commit well after that window.
The problem with this thinking is that the UNC job being open is such an unprecedented situation we can’t look at the portal the same way. The logic here is simple—if you are a top player, or at least think you are, you’ve seen all the talk about how no matter who Carolina hires they will be spending way more for their roster in the upcoming season. Why tie yourself to one place if you think you can use UNC as a way to get more? In a lot of ways it’s the exact same logic as coaches.
A new coach for Carolina will have the primary responsibility of examining the roster and deciding who they want to keep first and then work on keeping the recruiting class. Notably no one from that class has left it yet because the brand at UNC is such that you’d figure they are hiring a high-level coach.
Yes, a new coach will have to hit the ground running faster than a F1 racer, but that was going to be the case anyway. The arbitrary deadline of Tuesday really doesn’t exist.
What Arizona did for Tommy Lloyd is remarkable
Lost in all the panic about “What does Carolina do from here?” is about how it took something that is ridiculously extraordinary for Arizona to keep Lloyd. It shows that Carolina absolutely had an offer to grab an elite coach and get them out of the door of a powerful basketball program, and that program had to do something unprecedented to keep him. Something most schools wouldn’t do.
How unprecedented is this? Tommy Lloyd doesn’t have to report to the Athletic Director. Roy Williams never had that, Jon Scheyer doesn’t have that, Danny Hurley doesn’t have that—and I’m struggling to think of any football coach at any P4 school that has that despite being paid millions upon millions of dollars. Arizona thought the threat of Lloyd leaving was so real and he was so valuable to him that they allowed him to exist in a world unto himself in an athletic department that is financially strapped and looking to save where it can. That is ridiculous, and something Carolina couldn’t—or frankly shouldn’t—match. You completely understand why Lloyd stayed.
It ultimately speaks to the amount of clout that Carolina still has and the work they did in the back channels. That also leads to the last point.
When you’re aiming high, you have to wait
The only way this would have been done significantly quicker is if the season went off the rails a lot sooner and the leadership at Carolina had decided to move on after, say, the California trip. Once the last second nature of how things turned happened, you can’t just panic and take the first good person that’s available. You want a coach that is successful.
Well, a coach that’s successful is still coaching right now.
This isn’t football where at the end of the season there’s at least a week for successful coaches to work on the team and then speak to other schools. Carolina fired Davis on a Tuesday, and by Thursday the Sweet 16 was underway. Anyone still coaching at that point is solely focused on their team. Yes, you speak to the agents but there’s only so much an agent can do when the coach is focused on the team. In fact, you want a coach that isn’t distracted by this and still succeeds. It’s a rock-and-a-hard place situation. You identify the talent, and if that talent’s representation seems to be amenable to talking you focus in on them.
By all accounts another name high on the list in Billy Donovan won’t even entertain talking about a new job till the NBA season is over. There are a ton of great coaches still out there, ones who with the same resources promised will be given a chance to succeed, but also have a ton of pressure. You have to take the time to make sure you’re targeting the right coach that can handle all of that at once. Rushing to fill in a spot would just compound a mistake.
It’s the hardest thing in the world right now, but patience in this search is key. It’s increasingly harder because of just how badly the leadership at Carolina has messed up things—between Bill Belichick and the arena discussion—but ultimately all we can do at this point is just…wait.
