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UNC Does Family Due Diligence. Is Hubert Davis Leading Candidate?

It’s hard to look past what Wes Miller has accomplished though

By JD King
NCAA Men’s Final Four - Practice
HOUSTON, TEXAS - APRIL 01: Assistant coach Hubert Davis of the North Carolina Tar Heels looks on with his son Elijah during a practice session for the 2016 NCAA Men’s Final Four at NRG Stadium on April 1, 2016 in Houston, Texas.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

After Roy Williams announced his retirement, Bubba Cunningham said he was going to try to move fast to hire his replacement and he has already done some family interviews including, at least, UNC assistants Steve Robinson and Hubert Davis, Jerry Stackhouse, now flailing at Vanderbilt, King Rice, who has certainly had his moments at Monmouth and UNCG’s Wes Miller, who has been really outstanding. It took him a few years to get things rolling but over the last five seasons he’s gone 125-43.

For comparison purposes, over the last five years, Rice has gone 82-76. In his two years as a head coach, Stackhouse has gone 20-37.

Robinson was 46-18 at Tulsa and 64-86 at Florida State. His career record is 110-104.

Williams himself has gone 121-55 during the last five years.

Cunningham has reportedly asked some of these guys if they’d be willing to be assistants or work in some other capacity.

He’s also said he prefers someone with head coaching experience and if that’s key then you’d have to give the edge to Miller.

However, this article says that Andy Katz believes that Davis may be the leading candidate and that Kenny Smith, for some reason, merits an interview.

We’re not slamming him. He’s a passionate UNC guy. However, he has never coached so that seems kind of risky.

But here’s a thought if UNC decides to go in an unexpected direction, and it might make a lot of sense in many ways.

There were several reports that Indiana was trying to get Larry Brown to take a role on the new staff and work as a sort of senior adviser. Brown is 80 now, but he’s the absolute definition of a lifer and has a deep love for UNC basketball. If the coach were Smith or Davis, he could be invaluable as a practice coach and someone to just sort of offer a UNC-themed finishing school and he might enjoy finishing his basketball career where he started it.

If it were us and we hired an inexperienced coach, we’d try hard to make sure he was on board.

But we’d keep him way, way away from recruiting.

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