The “Fire Hubert” furor peaked as the North Carolina Tar Heels rode through darkness on a chilly bus across their home state.
It was Jan. 23, wee hours of the morning. Roads were frozen, but message boards were alight. Hubert Davis, they said, was “in way over his head.”
They said much worse, too, as the Tar Heels and their first-year head coach sat in silence. They’d just lost at Wake Forest by 22, four days after losing at Miami by 28. They were 12-6, 4-3 in the ACC, NCAA tournament bubblers at best, and some zealous followers of this basketball blueblood had seen enough. Enough to believe that Davis, once beloved as a Carolina player and assistant coach, had been an ill-fated choice to succeed Roy Williams.
Two months later, he’s a Coach of the Year finalist and one victory away from a Final Four, so understandably, he’d rather not talk about any of this. Not about Wake, not about that night. ”That was a long time ago,” he said here Friday after a rousing Sweet 16 victory over UCLA.
