Beyond the historical matchup it setup for Saturday night, the North Carolina Tar Heels created a bit of history for their coach in the Elite Eight win over Saint Peter’s. With the victory, UNC made Hubert Davis the 10th men’s basketball coach to ever make a NCAA Tournament Final Four in their first season as a college head coach.
For a variety of reasons, that’s not a long list. Many teams changes coaches because the team is bad. It can also be difficult for a first-time coach to get hired at a Final Four-caliber program. In both instances, neither was really the case at UNC, but it was still somewhat of a gamble to hire a first-time coach with Davis.