In that time, North Carolina spotted him, watching him during the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League in Indianapolis. Hubert Davis, then an assistant coach at North Carolina, was checking in on a number of games at the same time, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of R.J. Davis.
“He hit a 3. Then I was looking at another game and just turned around. I saw him get a steal and a lay-in,” Hubert Davis recalled. “I’m watching another game, turned around, he hit another 3. And then I kept looking and walking around to other games. And I turned around and he hit another 3.
“He just kept making winning plays every time that I watched him on the floor. And I just felt like that would be the perfect fit for us, because he was making plays on the ball and off the ball. And I just felt like that’s one of the things that we needed.”
We are now just one week away from the Tar Heels’ season tip-off against Radford, and given the state of the football program, it cannot get here soon enough. Carolina is coming off a couple impressive showings in exhibition wins over FAU and St. Augustine’s. They reportedly dominated the Owls in a secret scrimmage and throttled an albeit less gifted Falcons team on Friday, 117-53.
In the Heels’ 64-point victory over St. Augustine’s, there really wasn’t anything to complain about. Obviously, I am cautious to overreact to a preseason game against a Division II opponent, but they showed you everything you could hope for from a team perspective. The defensive intensity was there from the opening tip until the final buzzer. We saw myriad different lineup combinations and virtually no drop-off from one to the next. The ball movement was purposeful, the pace was pushed consistently, and six different guys made at least two three-pointers. It was Carolina Basketball.
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