UNC Basketball 2022-23 Roster Summer Preview Series: RJ Davis

The upcoming 2022-23 UNC Basketball season is full of hope and building on the new beginnings established last year. Junior point guard RJ Davis is a big reason for that optimism.

New beginnings are exciting.
And exhilarating.
And terrifying.
And strange.

New beginnings are full of possibility.

This is true for me and this is certainly true for the 2022-23 North Carolina men’s basketball team.

New Beginnings Are Full Of Possibility for Isaac

As for me, this is my first article for Keeping It Heel. I’ve written about North Carolina athletics (chiefly men’s basketball) for nearly a decade and now have a new home with Keeping It Heel.

In the past year I have also begun hosting the Locked On Tar Heels podcast for the Locked On network, the only daily UNC podcast out there. I now have the distinct honor of bringing those two worlds together. In addition to writing for Keeping It Heel, we will share the Locked On Tar Heels podcast with the Keeping It Heel family on a consistent basis.

What Can You Expect From Me?

I love stats and numbers. I also love stories. So I call myself a statistical storyteller.

I’m the strange person who thinks stats are cool for their own sake. But I also recognize the bigger importance of stats: they help bring context and narrative to the sports stories we tell. That’s a huge part of why we enjoy sports so much, is it not? The stories.

Sports provide an opportunity to watch extremely talented people play a game we all love. We count the things they do while they play that sport, and we call them stats. We then incessantly debate and argue over those stats. But then we ultimately use those stats to help us more capably understand who those people are that we cheer for so fervently.

Stats tell stories.

And that’s precisely why I’m here at Keeping It Heel…to share with you the stats and stories of the North Carolina Tar Heels. To keep you to date about what’s going on in college athletics. To find statistical nuggets that help explain what’s going on when you watch the Tar Heels.

Whether it’s an episode of the Locked On Tar Heels podcast or an article you read on Keeping It Heel, my goal is to bring you the very best UNC content I can.

So always remember…

This is a place to have fun.
This is a place to be entertained.
This is a place to hear stories.
This is a place to learn stats.
This is a place to be educated.
This is a place for fans.
This is a place to cheer until you’re (Carolina) blue in the face.
This is a place for family.
This is a place for community.
This is a place for interaction.
This is a place for you.
This is a place for Tar Heels.

New Beginnings Are Full Of Possibility for UNC Basketball

Last year was a restart for the North Carolina men’s basketball team.
A brand new coach in Hubert Davis.
A new offensive approach.
A new lineup style – featuring one traditional big man instead of two.
An opportunity to start diving into NIL possibilities.
An opportunity to utilize the brand new one-time transfer rule to full effect, bringing in Dawson Garcia (Marquette), Justin McKoy (Virginia), and Brady Manek (Oklahoma).

It took a while for this newness to come together, but come together it did; culminating in a national runner-up finish for Coach Davis’ first team.

That end-of-season run sets up even more possibilities and even higher expectations for the 2022-23 Tar Heels, returning four-fifths of the so-called Iron Five.

In order to get to know Hubert Davis’ second team better, we’ve been previewing each of the 13 scholarship players, one week at a time, on Locked On Tar Heels.

Summer Roster Preview Series

Every Wednesday this summer on Locked On Tar Heels, Coach Pac Kilby joins me to preview one scholarship member of the 2022-23 North Carolina men’s basketball team. We’ve already talked about the freshmen (Seth Trimble, Jalen Washington, Tyler Nickel, Will Shaver), the transfer (Pete Nance), the sophomores (D’Marco Dunn, Dontrez Styles), and one junior (Puff Johnson).

To whet your appetite, here’s the schedule for the weeks ahead:

• August 3 – Caleb Love
• August 10 – Justin McKoy
• August 17 – Armando Bacot
• August 24 – Leaky Black

That leaves just one scholarship player unnamed. It would be easy to overlook him (literally), since he is, after all, the shortest player on the entire roster (in fact, he’s shorter than the entire coaching staff as well).

Despite his physical stature, you can’t miss him on the court. His play speaks for itself as he runs the point for the Tar Heels. We’re speaking, of course, about rising junior RJ Davis.

Davis had a solid, albeit unremarkable, freshman season in the final year of the Roy Williams era. He and fellow freshman Caleb Love formed the starting backcourt for the first nine games of the season before Davis went to the bench, ceding the starting position to Kerwin Walton in an effort to get more three-point shooting on the floor. Davis started one other game in place of Love, but it was otherwise Love and Walton the rest of the season.

In the 2021-22 season, brand-new head coach Hubert Davis was committed to keeping both RJ and Caleb Love as the starting backcourt. That decision paid off in a major way, even eventually moving Davis to main point guard duties and switching Love off the ball. The duo has been the model of durability in their first two years, both playing in all 68 UNC games in that time span.

Davis grew in every standard stat from his freshman to his sophomore season, including categories such as points (8.4 to 13.5), field goal % (35.0 to 42.5), three-point % (32.3 to 36.7), free throw % (82.1 to 83.3), rebounds (2.3 to 4.3), assists (1.9 to 3.6), and assist-to-turnover ratio (1.0 to 1.9).

What’s to come in 2022-23? Davis will have had a full offseason to prepare to be the main point guard for a full season.

He set single-game career highs multiple times in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, including points (30 – Baylor), rebounds (12 – Kansas), assists (12 – Marquette), and made free throws (nine – Baylor). These statistical jumps point to even better things to come in the season ahead.

I project that Davis will be an All-ACC level player, leading the Tar Heels to a Final Four return.

Make sure to check out the Locked On Tar Heels episode discussing RJ Davis in even more depth.

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