After nearly missing the NCAA Tournament last season, North Carolina went all in on the offseason, spending $14 million to construct this year’s roster. Yet, midway through the season, the Tar Heels looked to be on the verge of collapse. Davis staved that off, but any high NCAA Tournament hopes have been dashed by Caleb Wilson’s season-ending hand injury.
UNC is limping into the Big Dance as a No. 6 seed and facing a red-hot VCU team coming off an A10 championship. The expectations have certainly changed without Wilson, but that doesn’t mean Davis gets a free pass if the Tar Heels get bounced early. Four years removed from his Final Four run, UNC fans are getting restless, and they have every right to be.
Another 1st-round exit is unacceptable for UNC even without its best player
Wilson is a fantastic player. He’ll be a top-five pick in this summer’s NBA Draft, and despite his injury, he finished as a second-team All-American this season. For UNC to reach its ultimate ceiling, he’s wholly indispensable. Still, with a $14 million roster, one key injury doesn’t make a first-round exit acceptable.
Since Davis led the Tar Heels on that improbable Final Four run in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, UNC has won just two tournament games and missed the big dance altogether in 2023. This season, even before Wilson’s injury, there were roster-building missteps that took major adjustments to overcome.
One of Davis’ biggest additions to the roster with that $14 million budget was former Colorado State point guard Kyan Evans. Evans struggled mightily in the first half of the year before he was limited to a reserve role, and Derek Dixon replaced him in the starting lineup. Davis deserves credit for making the Dixon for Evans swap and for sticking with Dixon through a prolonged shooting slump, but he also deserves criticism for missing so badly one of his big-ticket items.
Likewise, Davis and his staff can’t be let off the hook for the lack of depth behind Wilson and Henri Veesaar in the front court. The drop-off without them this season has been alarming, and if it hadn’t been for Zayden High’s surprising emergence as a playable backup big, he would be completely out of options. Even with High playing surprisingly well, UNC needs 35+ minutes from Veesaar now that Wilson is out.
It’s impossible to ignore Wilson’s injury when evaluating Davis’s job this season. However, it’s also worth acknowledging that the team he built was incredibly flimsy despite spending as aggressively as any team in the country.
Davis won’t get fired for this season, even if it ends in a first-round exit, and he probably shouldn’t. But his seat should be red-hot next season because the ‘if only Caleb Wilson didn’t get hurt’ excuse can only last for so long.