In his first year on the job, Hubert Davis took a team that went 23-8 in the regular season from a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament all the way to the national championship game, spoiling Coach K’s final season in the process.
It was the dream start to Davis’s tenure as Roy Williams’s replacement in Chapel Hill, but it ended by blowing a double-digit halftime lead to Kansas in the national title game, and Davis’s encore performance saw the Tar Heels miss the Big Dance a year later.Â
The peaks have been very high, but they’ve also been fleeting and followed by valleys that have sunk far too low. Now, Thursday’s second-half collapse against VCU may have been the final straw. And whether athletic director Bubba Cunningham moves on from Davis or not, UNC fans should be dreaming about these five potential replacements arriving in Chapel Hill next season.Â
Todd Golden is one year removed from winning a national championship at Florida and doing so before his 40th birthday. A coach like that is rarely ever going to leave their post, but if they were to, it would have to be for a program like North Carolina. Roy Williams left Kansas for Chapel Hill after back-to-back Final Four appearances.Â
Golden has been on the bleeding edge of the sport, helping to usher in an era of supersized front courts like the one he rode to a title last season, and that carried this year’s team to a No. 1 seed. Golden understands how to win in the Transfer Portal era with proven veterans without sacrificing the development of his young players. He’s set up for sustained success in Gainesville, but the ceiling might be even higher with the Tar Heels. If Bubba Cunningham fires Davis, he at least has to make Golden say no.Â
Nate Oats quickly turned a program that was a complete afterthought in the SEC and in Tuscaloosa into a perennial contender. Now, he seems to be hitting his head on the financial limitations of the Alabama basketball program, most recently losing out on five-star recruit Caleb Holt to Arizona.Â
Oats’s analytically driven style can have its flaws, but like Davis, he has a Final Four on his resume, and unlike Davis, his teams at Alabama have been consistently good and only once have bowed out in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Oats can win a national championship, but it would be a whole lot easier to do so at North Carolina.Â
TJ Otzelberger has done quite a bit of winning in his career, and the king of the ‘shmedium’ is still south of 50 years old. Otzelberger established himself at Iowa State as a hard-nosed, defensive-minded head coach, but this year his Cyclones finished top 20 in KenPom offensive efficiency.Â
Otzelberger, like Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell, has done more with less in Ames, and with the athletic department in dire financial straits, it could be the perfect time for him to jump ship.Â
Like Golden, Scott Drew has a national championship on his resume. However, since he won the title at Baylor in 2021, the program has slowly eroded as the NIL era has reached its peak. It’s gotten so bad that the Bears missed the tournament this season.Â
Drew was a top candidate for Kentucky when John Calipari left two years ago, and if he didn’t leave then, he may stay put now. However, in 2024, he was coming off a 24-win season. This year, he missed the tournament at 16-16. Drew is still just 55 years old, and where better to start a second act than Chapel Hill?Â
This is really a dream, but again, you have to make the call, and you have to make him say no. The 49-year-old president of basketball ops for the Boston Celtics last coached in 2021 before moving to the front office, and last coached in college in 2013. It’s a long shot, but then, these are dream candidates, and it’s North Carolina. Stevens didn’t leave the front office for his home-state Hoosiers, but maybe he’s getting the itch to get back on the sidelines. Probably not, but it’s worth a daydream.