When Florida State head coach Leonard Hamilton served as an assistant at Kentucky under Joe B. Hall from 1974-86, he was charged with preparing the North Carolina scouting report when they played the Tar Heels.
Hamilton, who is now the head coach at Florida State, said the same plays that were successful under Dean Smith were largely the same plays that Roy Williams had success with the past 18 seasons in Chapel Hill.
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim agreed, adding that Smith and Williams played "almost identical." But with Hubert Davis taking over the reins at UNC, most of the coaches at Tuesday's ACC Tipoff don't expect Davis to simply continue in the same way Carolina has traditionally played.
"Everything that they've earned over the years, I expect Hubert to take it to another level," Hamilton said during Tuesday's ACC Tipoff. "He'll put his little twist on it. I expect him to do some of the things similar, but I think he'll create his own identity."
Davis is in the process of putting his own stamp on Carolina basketball, even while paying homage to his predecessors. He wears Jordan Series .02 sneakers every practice, the ones that have the words "Dear Dean" etched on the side as a tribute to his former coach. He said it makes him feel like Smith is with him at practice.
Davis also channels his inner Roy Williams from time to time. UNC sophomore guard Caleb Love said there are times during practice when it feels like Williams is still coaching.
"In practice the other day he was like, 'I can be a certified basketball coach, but I am certified to be a track coach,' " Love said. "That's something Roy would say."
Despite those occasions of overlap, Love said there's no mistaking Davis is in charge. It's far from the first impression the St. Louis native had when Davis and former UNC assistant coach Steve Robinson visited him during his recruitment.
"I just thought he was just a guy that just smiles a lot and laughs a lot," Love said. "I didn't think he was much of a competitor until I actually got here. That's what I found out, like, oh, he's about business."
Davis' first item of business as coach was bringing in transfers to replace the frontcourt players the Tar Heels lost from last season. Garrison Brooks and Walker Kessler transferred to SEC schools and Day'Ron Sharpe became an NBA first-round draft pick.
That he recruited and signed three transfers in Brady Manek (Oklahoma), Dawson Garcia (Marquette) and Justin McKoy (Virginia) who can all shoot from 3-point range and help space the floor was no coincidence. He's preparing the Heels to have a different look while still keeping program staples.
"Carolina is going to be Carolina, we're gonna get after it on the offensive glass, we'll play a fast pace, we'll get after it from a defensive standpoint, we're going to share the basketball," Davis said. "We're going to play the right way so those things will never change. But also in my time as an assistant coach, there are things that I have learned, and things that I have adopted and love."
Davis said there was a time he would have bucked at playing two point guards in the same lineup, but watching Joel Berry II and Marcus Paige together changed his mind. He also said he liked the way Luke Maye could space the floor as a stretch-4, which is why he wants the bigs to shoot this season.
Davis said junior forward Armando Bacot made 1,000 3-pointers a week in the summer and has become a prototype NBA big with his ability to not only shoot from the perimeter but defend it, too.
"Getting Dawson Garcia and Brady Manek and Justin McCoy — we went after those guys, that wasn't by accident, that was intentional in terms of the type of basketball that we want to play, the type of bigs that we want to play," Davis said. "Basketball has changed in terms of spacing and balance and movement, but we can still do that playing the Carolina way and that's what I expect this to be like."
Last season's frontcourt players were best equipped to play on the post and not much else. Davis has clearly emphasized he wants that to change. Bacot said the Heels were even tinkering with playing 4-out with just one player in the post this season.
"That's the beauty of being a head coach, it's your time, you do it your way," Virginia coach Tony Bennett said.
Aside from playing style, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said he hasn't yet thought about what it will be like to see Davis on the UNC bench instead of Williams.
"The thing about Duke and North Carolina, Roy and I and Dean and I developed great friendships because we all three understood the honor it was to be in that game to be in that rivalry," Krzyzewski said. "So whoever is sitting in North Carolina's seat or Duke's seat, it will never supersede that rivalry. You know the person or the persons will never be more important than the rivalry."
