Myron MedcalfNov 7, 2025, 09:00 AM ET

Close

Myron Medcalf covers college basketball for ESPN.com. He joined ESPN in 2011.

THE NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS are used to being under a microscope. This is a program with six national championships and the jerseys of icons such as Michael Jordan and James Worthy in its rafters and that has always brought the fair share of the scrutiny that comes with being a blue blood.

But in most seasons, UNC is fielding complaints about its talent, consistency and success. In 2024-25, the vitriol was different. After receiving a First Four slot as an 11-seed in the NCAA tournament, the Tar Heels were widely viewed as undeserving.

With an 8-6 record in its last 14 games of the regular season and a résumé void of signature wins, North Carolina making the field created so much controversy that West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey held a news conference in the wake of Selection Sunday to accuse the selection committee – led by UNC’s athletic director Bubba Cunningham – of a fraudulent process and a “miscarriage of justice” (the West Virginia Mountaineers missed the tournament as a result of North Carolina’s inclusion).

“Last season was hard, and we worked, we fought, and I know we weren’t the best team, but I give my guys just the most kudos in the world for how much adversity and how much we fought through,” said Seth Trimble, the team’s top returning scorer. “And then just hearing the naysayers. I mean, we heard them all year long. We heard them during the tournament. We heard them right before the tournament. It was nothing new.”

Coach Hubert Davis’ four years in charge of his alma mater have featured yo-yo finishes: a run to the national title game as an 8-seed in his first; missing the tournament altogether in his second. Two years ago, he led the Tar Heels to the Sweet 16 as a No. 1 seed, finishing with 29 wins. Last March, it was a lackluster 22-13 season and a first-round tournament loss.

Cunningham says he is confident in Davis’ ability to lead the program after extending his contract through 2030 earlier this year. But in his fifth year at the helm, another subpar season could mean Davis cannot consistently meet the standard in Chapel Hill, risking hot-seat talk turning into a storyline.

“I mean, can we win a national championship every year? No. Do we have aspirations to win it? Yes,” Cunningham told ESPN. “And are we going to continue to support our program, our coaches and our students with the resources to get to that level? Absolutely. That’s our ambition and we’re not going to back off of it.”

North Carolina did lose four of its top seven scorers from last season to the transfer portal and opened this season with its lowest ranking (No. 25) in the preseason AP poll since 2005, but the Tar Heels aren’t exactly underdogs as the 2025-26 season gets underway. Freshman Caleb Wilson is a confident, five-star recruit who anchors the No. 8 recruiting class in the country, one of the best in recent years for the Tar Heels. Plus, the return of Trimble and the additions of 6-foot-6 European star Luka Bogavac and 7-foot Arizona transfer Henri Veesaar should give the Tar Heels a chance to avoid another nerve-racking Selection Sunday. Still, it’s clear that North Carolina is trying to find itself – and perhaps a new identity – in the shifting landscape of college sports.

And if UNC’s prestigious past no longer guarantees a prestigious future, that puts even more pressure on Davis and his team. The Tar Heels’ fan base won’t accept that as an excuse for falling short.

“Even before I was head coach – as an assistant when I was here and when I played here – the expectation here is for every season for this program to have a chance [to win a national title],” Davis told ESPN. “And when I say the standard is the standard, that’s what I mean. And whether you get to the championship game or you make the NCAA tournament and lose in the first round like we did last year, the standard is the standard.

“Those are the expectations every year, regardless of whether we went to the championship the first year or not.”

---

A YEAR AFTER Matt Doherty won a national title as a reserve guard on a UNC team led by Jordan, Worthy and Sam Perkins – all future NBA stars – he went to a party with his teammates to celebrate that next season’s Elite Eight run.

Although North Carolina had just lost to Georgia in the 1983 regional final, he still expected a celebration for making it to the cusp of the Final Four. Instead, a Tar Heels fan made sure he knew his team had missed the mark.

“I remember going out one night and some guy said to me, ‘You guys suck,’” Doherty recalled. “I wanted to fight him.”

By the time Doherty was hired as the school’s head coach nearly 20 years later, the expectations were magnified. He’d carried the weight of wearing a North Carolina jersey as a player, but his attempt to uphold the school’s ambitions in the years that followed legendary coach Dean Smith’s retirement was more difficult than Doherty had ever imagined.

“You had high highs and low lows,” Doherty, who was fired in 2003, told ESPN. “And so dealing with that – the self-talk, the isolation – [because] you’re surrounded by a staff, your players, 22,000 fans, the athletic director, the chancellor, but you feel all alone. And so who do you talk to?”

Doherty is the one person in the North Carolina stratosphere who understands Davis’ plight. He is the only head coach the Tar Heels have fired over the past 75 years after he amassed a 53-43 record over three seasons (2000-2003), which included an eight-win season and only one NCAA tournament appearance. Although he knew that a program searching for its first national title since 1993 would place a heavy burden on his shoulders, Doherty quickly learned that the program had no appetite for losing. That reality has only been more challenging for Davis & Co. as they navigate the new compensation structures and transfer portal. Doherty said North Carolina, like other blue bloods, relied on its brand for too long in recruiting battles even as the landscape minimized the impact of that factor.

“I think they were slow to adopt the mindset and I don’t blame [Davis] for it,” he said. “I think it really was an institutional mindset: ‘We are North Carolina and we don’t pay players and this is a special place.’ And no one talks about being part of the Carolina family anymore. No one talks about academics. And so it comes down to two things for recruiting: ‘What are you going to pay me and what’s my path to the NBA look like?’”

After producing nine first-round NBA draft picks between 2016 and 2022, the Tar Heels have graduated only one in the three years since. Top high school recruits who might have picked North Carolina over programs without the same legacy and basketball pedigree – see: the No. 1 prospect in the 2025 class, AJ Dybantsa, who chose BYU – have rejected UNC’s overtures in recent years as the new financial rules have leveled the playing field.

As the negotiation battles for elite transfers and recruits unfolded last spring, the same North Carolina program that has historically been anchored by some of the game’s greatest college big men failed to land an elite power forward or center in the portal. Undersized and limited in the paint for the first time in years, the Tar Heels could not overcome their flaws and the struggles of former All-American RJ Davis.

“Obviously, last year we were small,” Davis said. “Playing at our level, you have to have size, you have to have positional size, and pretty much every game that we played, we were smaller than our opponent. And where it hurt us the most was rebounding.”

As the struggles progressed, everyone around the program could feel the gray cloud around Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels hadn’t adapted to the new rules of college sports the way their neighbor down Tobacco Road had, landing only one recruit (Wilson) ranked inside the top five of the SC Next 100 in the four recruiting cycles since NIL was adopted compared to three for Duke.

“He’s had some great winning seasons, he had an opportunity to win it all and he had some seasons that didn’t go so well,” former North Carolina star Raymond Felton said. “But that’s part of it, man. I support [Davis] 100%. I think he’s done a great job so far and he’s dealing with a lot that’s changed in the game of basketball with the NIL stuff and then the transfer portal and kids just being able to leave whenever they want to if they’re not happy.”

When Cunningham hired Davis – a former UNC star and assistant coach – to follow Roy Williams in 2021, he told him to be prepared to adapt. But he did not know what that would entail. Between a multimillion-dollar investment in football and talk of a new arena that could generate more revenue, UNC athletics – and UNC men’s basketball, by extension – has had to navigate all of this as the rules that govern college sports rapidly change.

As a result, Davis and his staff are tackling the greatest challenge facing every team: How do you build a winning program and then do it all over again a year later when anything short of a Final Four draws side-eyes and boos from fans?

“I think what Carolina has been really good at for 50 years is identifying elite high school talent that develops into great collegiate players and then onto the NBA,” Cunningham said. “And I think we’re still really good at that, but ... I also think you need some transfers and some of the older players, and I think you need a mix. So I do think the transfer portal and NIL have added to the complexity for the coaches and the general managers to say, ‘OK, what is the right mix for us to be successful and what’s the right mix for us at this institution?’”

---

OVER THE SUMMER, a young podcaster spotted Wilson – a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA draft – on campus.

And, well, Wilson did the rest.

“I don’t like Duke, I don’t like NC State, I don’t like Wake Forest,” Wilson said in the viral clip. “This year we’re putting belt on everybody. I’m talking real belt, sparkle, bedazzle. You already know what time it is. Stay up. Tar Heels winning the damn game.”

UNC’s freshman Caleb Wilson has some words for Duke, NC State and Wake Forest! 😂 pic.twitter.com/0IgVRtB4i3

— Donté J Harvey (@dontejharvey) September 5, 2025

Months before his first game, the 6-foot-8 prospect had thrown the first punch against his school’s biggest rivals. Asked if he regretted his comments, the No. 5 recruit in the SC Next 100 for 2025 doubled down.

“I didn’t care,” he said of the reaction. “Honestly, I’m not a ‘say it and hide my tail’ kind of guy. If I say it out of my mouth, then that’s what I mean. Let me back it up when I get on the court.”

Every great North Carolina team has had a star with the swagger Wilson oozes. Davis says he believes in this season’s team as much as any that he has coached in Chapel Hill, in part because of Wilson, who understands the pressure that comes with trying to return the Tar Heels to the pinnacle of the sport – and seems to love it.

By all accounts, Wilson has spent the offseason showcasing a dominance in workouts and practices that has excited his teammates about what’s ahead.

“We have incredible talent and [Wilson], since he got here, he has surprised me a lot with his playmaking ability and just how smart of a player he is,” said Veesaar, the former Arizona standout. “I didn’t think it was possible coming out of high school. I knew he was a freak athlete and a really good player, but just the way he can actually read the game and pass is what has really stood out to me. I think he’s going to help us elevate our game.”

Of course, North Carolina is bigger than only one player. But Wilson is in Chapel Hill to help UNC start a new chapter and prove that Carolina is still Carolina – and he’s not alone. Veesaar was one of the top targets in the portal. Trimble, the only returning player who averaged double figures a season ago (11.6 PPG), is due for a breakout season. And Wilson is one of three top-60 recruits in Davis’ top-10 class. That ranking doesn’t include Bogavac, who has played professionally in Europe since he was a teenager.

It’s undeniable UNC has more players with potential than the proven commodities of past years. Davis says this season’s group is “coachable.” And this team won’t suffer the same physical disadvantages that hurt the program in past years.

Former NBA agent Jim Tanner was also hired as general manager to help the program identify and attract more elite players moving forward.

The ultimate test of these Tar Heels will be whether they can advance past the first round of the NCAA tournament after failing to do so two of the past three years. And with the program’s future spot in college basketball’s pecking order potentially on the line, blocking out the noise could prove more difficult than it has ever been – especially if the turbulence of last March carries over into this season.

“You’ve got to embrace that people aren’t rooting for you,” Trimble said. “People want to see you fail. People hate you. People hate the jerseys that you put on and you’ve just got to accept it, and you’ve got to go on the court with that extra motivation, with that extra confidence knowing that they want to see you lose.”

Davis, however, is notoriously difficult to rattle. He has disconnected from the internet and all of its vitriol. If there are any doubters out there, he doesn’t pay attention to them, he said.

“I’m not on social media,” Davis said. “[I’m] focusing on what is real and what is real is that it’s my job to, as the head coach, lead this program to the best of my ability. And that’s something that nothing will take my focus off of.

“[The] other thing is there are highs and lows in anything you do in your life. I’ve never seen or experienced anything where it was all sunny days. I’ve just never experienced that, so if that’s not possible, then on those rainy and stormy or cloudy days, those are the days to learn from and grow from. And if you look at it from that perspective, there are a lot more sunny days than cloudy days.”