Andy Enfield’s move to SMU fascinates me on all sides. I can see USC wanting to fire him, but USC didn’t fire him. He left. I can see SMU wanting to hire him, but over Rob Lanier? That’s not a decision a rational decisionmaker would make. The thing that makes the most sense about it is that Enfield left USC to take the job. He built himself a house of cards over there, and injuries provided some cover this season but the program is not especially competitive nationally. He extends his own clock a little by going to Dallas. He gains the time to figure some things out.
A theory I’m working on regarding the SMU side of the move is that SMU wanted flash, and that Andy Enfield’s experience bringing NBA talent to a football school in an NBA city made the SMU brass view him as a sexy pick. (We almost always use “sexy” pejoratively around here.) I think it’s fair to guess that while Lanier’s results were great, SMU boosters didn’t understand how great they were, because they weren’t coming with NCAA Tournament berths. I think it’s also fair to guess that SMU boosters didn’t like Lanier’s style. They may have wanted more basketball on grass on hardwood, not boxing in the paint. Hiring Enfield as a way to connect with SMU boosters and improve SMU’s basketball marketing is the only way this adds up.
What I’m most curious about, though, is how LeBron fits into this. Bronny James is still at USC, at least for now, and LeBron is still on the Lakers, nearby. Will Bronny transfer? Will Bronny stay? Is LeBron James in charge of hiring the new USC coach? What’s the status of Bryce James’s recruitment?
The deal with Bronny James and Bryce James is that they aren’t NBA talents. Not unless something changes. Bronny was a four-star, even before the terrifying cardiac arrest incident. Bryce is a three-star. If Bronny wasn’t the son of LeBron James, he’d be a former good recruit but a no-name nationally, and any NBA talk would be forced, especially after a first season which didn’t dazzle. But if Bronny and LeBron become a package deal, that still should have some value to an NBA franchise, even if (as it goes with SMU hiring Enfield) the value would be more off-court than on.
LeBron James is a meddler. Archie Manning is too, but he meddles in a different way—looking for the best situation for his progeny and then committing to that situation, the idea being to become iconic in a specific realm. LeBron James meddles by looking for the situation he likes most, shaping it to his short-term liking, then looking for the next thing. The commitment aspect isn’t there with LeBron. It’s always temporary. This isn’t a mortal sin or anything—from what we know, LeBron James has been a better human throughout his life than Peyton Manning has been, to pick one of Archie’s sons—but it always makes for drama, and with LeBron James now involved in college basketball for the first time ever, the ripple effects can be wider-reaching than they are in a static, 30-team professional league.
I have no idea where this is all going to go. But I would imagine we see some drama involving the James family this offseason. There’s meddling going on. There has to be.
(Given how much LeBron’s disparaged the college game this year…is there a chance he temporarily retires, to coach USC? I know this sounds crazy, but as a guy who talks about fixing how college basketball is played, as a guy who likes to jump between situations, and as a guy who likes to prove he can do things beyond what he’s known to be able to do, it would sure be in character.)
Is Hubert Davis a Good Coach?
Credit to Hubert Davis, who righted the ship after a disaster last year, bringing in the right pieces and getting them to work well together.
Now.
What comes next?
Armando Bacot is out of eligibility. RJ Davis evidently has a year left (I forgot until today that the Covid year of extra eligibility covered the 2020–21 season), but prognosticators lean towards him not returning. Should RJ Davis move on, the last of the 2022 roster Hubert Davis largely inherited from Roy Williams will be gone. Carolina will at last be Hubert Davis’s program, his to shape as he will.
Hubert Davis hasn’t done a bad job overall as North Carolina’s coach. His first season was forgettable on the whole but unforgettable in how it ended. His second season was a mess, but the Tar Heels weren’t that bad. His third season featured an ACC regular season championship, a 1-seed, and a clean sweep of Duke, but never featured UNC really elevating to the level of UConn, Purdue, or Houston. His teams have ceilinged out near the edge of the title-contending tier. His teams have probably underperformed their talent, on average, in all three of his seasons. After last year, it was fair to call Hubert Davis a bad coach. After this year, the jury’s back out.
What’s important about evaluating Hubert Davis is remembering that he hasn’t fully been a head coach yet. He’s spent the last three years in a pseudo-interim role.
As we said above, that 2022 team was built by Roy Williams. The 2023 team was a converted version of the 2022 team. The 2024 team was a converted version of the 2023 team. The core has been there through Hubert Davis’s whole three-year tenure, and it isn’t a core he built. Hubert Davis has coached basketball teams. He’s yet to build one.
Hubert Davis might prove very good at this. His transfer portal additions this offseason worked out splendidly. Successfully navigating whatever the situation was at the end of last season without the program wholly disintegrating may have been a feat of interpersonal management. There are reasons to believe Hubert Davis can run a great program at UNC. We just don’t know yet. We really don’t know.
If RJ Davis does move on, the job is about to finally become fully Hubert Davis’s. A rebuild is fair play. He shouldn’t be judged purely on the results of next season, outside of context. But last night was likely the end of an era for UNC, and the beginning of a new one. The new one belongs to this head coach.
The Rest
A thought each for the three non-UNC games:
- It’s mostly sadness for the Iowa State players, for me. My brother said it best when he texted that it was a game both teams should have won by twenty. Illinois missed its free throws. Iowa State missed its opportunities at the rim. So much went well this season, which makes it tough to have laid an egg when Iowa State laid it. I’m sad to not be gearing up for a UConn clash tomorrow night.
- Speaking of UConn, it’s fair to wonder if they’re inevitable. It’s a fair question to ask. They have been so dominant, and they were so dominant last year as well. They make competitive teams look bad. That said, it’s true that they haven’t had to play a top team in any of their nine straight tournament victories, and this isn’t college football, where the best team so often wins. This is college basketball. Things get random. A three-game situation offers less opportunity for randomness than a six-game situation, so UConn’s definitely honing in, and the path is very open on their side of the bracket, but it was unexpected for Clemson to beat Arizona. It can happen. Also, even if UConn rolls through these next two, they’ll most likely have to overcome Houston, Purdue, or Duke in the championship. All three of those are top-five teams right now, and two of them have been title contenders for most if not all of the season.
- Arizona doesn’t have a Tommy Lloyd problem. He’ll get the narrative, but the guy’s in his third year as a head coach and he’s going to have finished with a top-twelve kenpom team in each of those three years. I do think single-elimination basketball is different from the regular season, but it’s not that different. Lloyd is fine.
The Cubs:
- Tough loss, especially after nearly stealing one on that missed call and getting to celebrate Michael Busch as a hero. It hurts to lose Justin Steele. Hamstring injuries are hard to parse. It especially hurts amidst a pitching staff with a lot of believable back-end options but no known firepower up front. This would be different if the Cubs had been the team to buy a year of Jordan Montgomery on the cheap. Steele is the man, but he already fit better into a number-two role. He was a weird fit as the ace. Now, it’s Shōta Imanaga, Kyle Hendricks, and varying degrees of lottery tickets. Eventually, the hope is that one of the lottery tickets turns into a true ace, but even though the Cubs’ farm system is good, we’re not at the point where that kind of breakthrough should be an expectation. There are tons of reasons for optimism (Tommy Hottovy chief among them), but the situation is dicey.
