UNC ‘desperate’ to win ACC Tournament in Washington, D.C. homecoming for Hubert Davis

Hubert Davis walked through North Carolina’s downtown Washington, D.C., hotel on Wednesday afternoon and felt the tinges of emotion that come with any homecoming, the good memories and the bad. Davis was born in Winston-Salem but grew up in Burke, Virginia, a suburb of Washington about 20 miles southwest of Capital One Arena, site of this week’s ACC Tournament.

For Davis, the Tar Heels’ third-year head coach, there are emotional layers to his team’s trip here this week. For one, he’s trying to lead UNC to its first ACC Tournament championship since 2016, which it also won in this building. But then there’s everything else that has come with being in a place close to home — the familiar sights and lingering nostalgia.

Indeed, Davis said, being back here brought “a lot” of personal reflection.

“Again, I was born in Winston-Salem, but my dad worked for 35 years for the Department of Education for the United States government, so his offices were just right down the street,” Davis said. “So this was home to me. And it brings back great memories, but it also brings back sad memories, just because of my mom.

“And just, you know, taking her to the hospitals, and her doing radiation and chemotherapy. And so there’s a lot of history here, for me.”

Davis lost his mother to cancer during his college years at UNC, and developed a strong religious faith to help him navigate the pain. He became an All-ACC player, after arriving in Chapel Hill as something of a lightly-regarded prospect, and during his head coaching tenure he has often described part of his mission as providing his players with the same experience as he had at UNC.

Part of that would include winning the ACC Tournament. As a player, Davis was a part of two conference tournament championship teams — the first during his freshman season, in 1989, and the second in 1991. In ‘89, Dean Smith put him into the championship game, against Duke, with 32 seconds to play, with several UNC players in foul trouble.

“You’re not nervous, are you?” Smith asked Davis then, according to newspaper accounts.

“No, sir,” Davis said.

Two years later, in another championship victory against Duke, Davis scored 17 points.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the Tar Heels won the ACC Tournament seven times. They’ve entered into something of a drought, by their historical standard, since. UNC has won the conference tournament three times since 2000. It took nine years for UNC to win it again after its 1997 tournament title, and then another eight after it won it for the second year in a row in 2008.

And now it has been seven years, and counting.

“We’re desperate to win this tournament,” Armando Bacot, the fifth-year senior forward, said Wednesday. “It’s something that nobody here has won. And we want to win it bad because it’s a lot of things. First, we want to be able to hang another banner for the team.

“But also, it affects our (NCAA Tournament) seeding in March, and obviously the tournament isn’t easy, so if we can make it as easy on us as possible in terms of getting a high seed, that’s what we want to do.”

UNC, which has never lost in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals as the No. 1 seed, will play against Florida State at noon on Thursday. The Seminoles, who defeated Virginia Tech here on Wednesday, tested UNC twice before the Tar Heels prevailed in both games during the regular season.

Bacot and his teammates appeared loose Wednesday, after their morning practice. They dined on a buffet lunch and Hubert Davis, unprompted, revealed how Bacot had anointed himself with a new nickname — “Three and D” — in recognition of his appearance on the ACC’s All-Defensive Team, and his success in making a couple of 3-pointers during UNC’s senior night victory.

“He’s been going around saying, ‘I’m a Three-and-D guy,’” Davis said. “So I just — I’d like him to be a ‘D guy.’”