ACC Question Marks: How Long Will It Take To Learn To Hate Hubert Davis?

We weren’t planning on doing two ACC Question Marks on UNC right out of the gate but then we saw this story and, well, it’s going to happen - and it’s going to be weird.

We’ve said a couple of related things for a long time now: first, competition makes it very difficult to see people as fully relatable and second, that some guys at UNC, despite the filter of competition, are hard to dislike.

Here are a few: Dante Calabria, Shammond Williams, George Lynch, Eric Montross and, yes, Davis himself.

What’s not to like? He’s obviously a decent person, has an incadescent smile and was hugely popular when he was on ESPN.

But...well...he coaches over there now and that’s going to be hard to get used to. And of course he’ll see the rivalry from his own filter, as we saw this week when someone asked him how he sees Duke: “second place.”

On the one hand, that’s about how you’d expect the likable Davis to respond.

On the other?

He’s coaching....over there.

So everything gets really intense and overblown.

Remember when Coach K said he and Dean Smith didn’t exactly smoke from the same pack?

That infuriated people over there. It was needling, it was funny, and it was a heat-seeking missile of a dig.

Davis’s needling was slight, almost, dare we say it, sweet, so most people will let it go. It’s not like he said Duke had the ugliest cheerleaders or anything.

But things will happen. He’ll get mad after a loss or something and vent.

That’s when things will get interesting.

And that’s just Duke fans. State fans may not take nearly as long.