Finally, After Duke’s Three-Year Head Start,
UNC Plans To Modernize Hoops Approach
By David Glenn
North Carolina Sports Network
Just two days after Duke’s 87-70 annihilation of UNC in Durham last Saturday, embattled Carolina coach Hubert Davis took the extraordinary step of admitting publicly that the Tar Heels’ current approach to men’s basketball is obsolete.
“The old model for Carolina basketball just doesn’t work,” Davis said. “It’s not sustainable.”
Davis didn’t mention the Blue Devils’ modernized model specifically at his weekly radio show on Monday, but as he elaborated on his initial comments, it became clear that he wants to add many of the elements Duke has had in place for several years.
For example, Davis specified that UNC plans to hire a general manager specifically for men’s basketball, just as the Tar Heels have done for their women’s basketball (June 2023) and football (December 2024) programs in recent years.
“We’re going to hire a GM,” Davis said. “We need a director of marketing and fundraising, for (Name-Image-Likeness), for program needs. There needs to be a video coordinator with graphics, recruiting coordinator, all those different kinds of stuff that have to be built out.”
Duke hired its general manager, Rachel Baker, in June 2022, just two months after long-time assistant and former Blue Devils player Jon Scheyer succeeded legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski in Durham.
In their official release announcing the hiring of Baker, whose most recent work had been with Nike (eight years, including marketing efforts surrounding NBA superstar Kevin Durant) and in the NBA (one year), the Blue Devils said she would “specialize in helping players enhance their personal and professional skill sets, capitalize on strategic partnerships, including NIL opportunities, and work to support players in navigating the opportunities and challenges that come with being a student-athlete at the highest level.”
“The state of college basketball is growing and changing at an exponential rate,” Scheyer said at the time. “Rachel is a one-of-a-kind talent with unique experience that will provide our players and their families with an unparalleled resource and partner as we navigate new frontiers of college basketball together.
“Through her work in the NBA and at Nike, she brings nearly a decade of expertise in the business of basketball to our staff, as well as her gifts in relationship- and community-building, leadership development, and experiential marketing. We can’t wait to see all she brings to our program in this newly created position.”
Duke’s massive support structure around Scheyer also includes a “Special Assistant to the Head Coach” (former Elon basketball coach Mike Schrage), a “Director of Player Development” (former Duke player Justin Robinson), a “Creative Director” (David Bradley), a “Director of Scouting and Analytics” (Zach Marcus) and an “Associate Director of Player Branding” (Nick Colosimo), among many others.
While there have been complicated, unsuccessful and even disastrous follow-the-legend hires littered throughout college basketball history, including at prominent programs such as Duke, Indiana, UNC and UCLA, Duke’s transition from Krzyzewski to Scheyer has been virtually seamless, even during this era of massive change (e.g., player agents, NIL money, NCAA transfer portal) in college sports.
The Blue Devils never stopped signing top-ranked high school recruiting classes, and more recently they decided to supplement their highly decorated prep stars and future NBA players with a handful of carefully selected veterans (e.g., Syracuse forward Maliq Brown, Tulane guard Sion James, Purdue forward Mason Gillis) from the transfer portal.
As a result, their on-court results have been remarkable.
In his first year, Scheyer went 27-9, finished third in the conference and won the ACC championship. In his second year, he went 27-9, finished second in the league standings (behind UNC) and took the Blue Devils to the Elite Eight. Here in his third year, he has his team 20-2, #2 in the national rankings and a perfect 12-0 in the ACC.
(For anyone wondering, there hasn’t been an ACC team that went undefeated in conference play since 1999, when Duke posted a 16-0 mark. Those Blue Devils went on to win the ACC Tournament and advanced to the NCAA championship game with a 37-1 record before losing to UConn.)
While it’s impossible to quantify exactly how much of Duke’s recent success is attributable to a very smart hire (Scheyer) and how much to the expansive infrastructure around him, there’s simply no reason to question the current state of the Blue Devils’ program, regardless of how their incredibly promising season ultimately ends.
Whereas Duke hasn’t missed a beat since its legendary coach retired, in the aftermath of UNC’s 2021 transition from Roy Williams to Davis, the Tar Heels already have missed the NCAA Tournament in 2023 … and they might miss it again this year.
That’s a far more alarming trend for Carolina than any single season or any single-game result, even the Tar Heels’ recent loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium, in which they were truly embarrassed in a completely one-sided (47-25) first half.
“Well, obviously, we’re not where we want it to be,” Davis said after the game.
Clearly, those sentiments were intended to describe the Heels’ ugly loss in Durham.
In a more general sense, though, those words also apply well to UNC’s middling 2024-25 campaign, Davis’ volatile four-year tenure in Chapel Hill, and — perhaps most importantly — Carolina’s top-to-bottom approach to winning in the modern era.
“(UNC’s model) has to build out, because there’s so many things in play: NIL, the transfer portal, agents, international players.” Davis said. “You just need a bigger staff to be able to maintain things, and you need a bigger staff so I can do what I’m supposed to be doing, and that’s coaching basketball.”
