For Hubert Davis, it’s ‘Live Action’: Motivation behind the movement of UNC’s head coach

The moment will inevitably arrive at some point Thursday during North Carolina’s first round NCAA Tournament game against Wagner in Charlotte, though the Tar Heels have to hope it won’t happen amid circumstances too dramatic. But it will come, nonetheless: when Hubert Davis whips off his glasses, sets them on the scorer’s table, leaves them there for a bit or maybe puts them right back on.

The sequence might just include some stomping — for Davis has seemed to become more of a stomper during his third season as UNC’s head coach. He may clap his hands, too, in rapid succession, or grit his teeth and scrunch his face, or twirl and twist around, testing the limits of his sportcoat. Those are some of Davis’ moves, when his team inspires him to act with some urgency.

And, often, when he’s trying to inspire his players to do the same.

“They’re not choreographed,” he said last week of his gesticulations, those more pronounced and less so; those the camera catches and those it might miss. Sometimes the movements are quicker, sometimes part of a larger kind of dance. “And my wife makes fun of me all the time.”

Davis lifted up his right hand, explaining further. He pointed to the black Oura Ring he was wearing on his ring finger — a smart ring, its maker says, “for fitness, stress, sleep and health” that “takes into consideration over 20 different body signals,” according to its website. Davis said his wife, Leslie, is the one who’s interested in seeing the data.

“She wants to see my heart rate at the end of games and stuff,” he said.

‘It’s LIVE ACTION’

Undoubtedly, there have been some high readings. For a little while after Davis began his first season as head coach, late in 2021, he usually maintained a kind of stoic calm. He often stood, instead of sitting, but it took him some time to become the high-stepping, fist-pumping, twirling and turning maestro of the sideline everyone sees now, when the moment calls for it.

One of his breakouts, in a physical sense, came during UNC’s victory at Duke at the end of the regular season in 2022 — the one that spoiled Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game. Davis had told his team to prepare for a fight that day, and he coached as if he would have preferred to be a willing participant. He remained animated throughout the NCAA Tournament run that March.

And then came, perhaps, the true moment of arrival, or at least one that inspired a catch phrase. During an in-game television interview early in UNC’s game against Duke in the 2022 Final Four, a hoarse Davis sounded a little mad — in a good way — when he cut off a question from Tracy Wolfson and yelled, “Pretty fun game, isn’t it!?”

“We’re competin’ out there! It’s live action, Tracy! It’s LIVE ACTION out there!”

Wolfson smiled. Jim Nantz laughed, when the broadcast returned to him. His colleagues cracked jokes. Bill Raftery said he thought Davis might ask Wolfson to put on a jersey.

“I thought he was Hulk Hogan or something,” Grant Hill said, stifling his own laughter.

It was hardly a surprise, then, that as the 2022-23 season approached, UNC had found a new name for its signature preseason event: Live Action with Hubert Davis. That’s as good of a way as any to describe Davis when he undergoes the transformation from the mild-mannered, arms-crossed observer he is most of the time on the sideline, to the frenetic, spinning, stomper he sometimes is.

Live Action Hubert.

He was back, in vintage Live Action Mode, early in the second half of his team’s recent victory at Duke. The Tar Heels led throughout that game but the Blue Devils during the first few minutes after halftime had cut their deficit to two points. Cameron Indoor Stadium, nearly always a cauldron of noise and energy when UNC is in town, had erupted into peak insanity.

And then, on the sideline, Davis seemed to absorb and redistribute the electricity amid a game-defining sequence: an Armando Bacot three-point play, a Jae’Lyn Withers tip-in off of a miss, a Cormac Ryan lay-up, in transition, off of a blocked shot. With his animated movement, Davis both celebrated those moments and urged his players to deliver more.

It was like a dance: big arm swings, turns, claps, fist pumps.

“It’s LIVE ACTION, Tracy!”

‘It keeps us going’

The emotional and physical outbursts “gets me hype,” Harrison Ingram, the junior forward, said last week, before repeating those words again, nodding in affirmation.

“Gets me hype, knowing my coach is right there, you know. He’s not sitting down. He’s not chilling in his seat, with a clipboard. He’s up there with us. He’s in a stance when we’re on defense. He’s closing out on shots when we’re closing out on shots.

“And we pick up the energy from him and it keeps us going.”

Every coach has their trademark tics on the sideline, those behaviors that become part of a persona. Davis undoubtedly picked up at least a couple from his predecessor, Roy Williams. Davis does not use profanity and Williams tried to avoid it, as well (one memorable nationally-televised instance notwithstanding, after his 2003 national championship game loss at Kansas).

Instead of cursing, Williams developed his own kind of vocabulary to relay his displeasure: “dadgum” and “flippin’” and “blankety-blank” were go-tos. Davis, too, uses fill-ins. Instead of one particular four-letter F-word, he uses “fork” or “fart.” As in: “What the fork was he doing on that play?” or, “What the fart was the deal with that call!?”

Davis also uses the same kind of one-handed (or one-armed?) gesture Williams used to instruct his players that he wanted them to get moving. And Williams likely picked it up from Dean Smith, who used a similar motion decades ago, though perhaps in a more understated way. And now it belongs to Davis, the same kind of sweeping motion to indicate that he wants to see his guys get up and down the court; and “I’m just telling them ‘let’s go, let’s go,’” Davis said.

“I want to play fast,” he said. “But Coach Smith and Coach Williams did that and I did take that from them.”

‘Just me being me’

Then there’s the thing with the glasses. Williams was known to express his frustration through the removal or readjustment of his. Sometimes, if he was particularly frustrated by an official’s call or a player’s lapse in judgment, he would all but slam his glasses onto the scorer’s table.

Davis, most times, at least handles his glasses with a little more care. Often, one of the first things he does before any game is to set his glasses case — navy blue, and slim — onto the scorers’ table, in front of Steve Kirschner, the UNC basketball sports information director. The case seems to provide a target of sorts for Davis. When the time comes for him to peel them off in a fit of emotional release, they inevitably wind up somewhere near the case. And then, not long after, back on his face.

That pattern repeated throughout the ACC Tournament last week. Each day brought a new intensity.

The Tar Heels began the tournament with an easy victory against Florida State that didn’t require a lot of Live Action Hubert moments. But there he was during a tough victory in the semifinals against Pittsburgh. And throughout the championship game defeat against N.C. State. The first half of that game, especially, featured Live Action Hubert at his peak.

During breaks in play, in team huddles, his voice could be heard above the din of the public address system or whatever music they were playing inside Capital One Arena. He appeared as energized as ever, trying to will that sense of desperation out of his players in effort to match that of N.C. State, which hadn’t won an ACC Tournament in 37 years.

“It definitely fires me up,” Elliot Cadeau, the freshman point guard, said of Davis’ energy.

Davis last week described his Live Action side like this:

“I always tell the guys that I don’t know how you play this game absent of emotion,” he said. “And I want people to play with their personality. ... And so, for me, the hardest part is I’m 53 and I can’t play anymore. And so I just get so excited out there.

“And so I will jump up. I’ll stomp. I’ll raise my hand. And that’s why I stand up the whole game. I can’t — I don’t know how Coach Williams sat down, the whole game. I just can’t sit down there. I get so excited and I just want to see the guys play really well.

“And so it’s not choreographed. That’s just me being me.”

Win or go home

And so it will happen, inevitably, this week in Charlotte: Davis will transform. The smart ring he wears will be put to work. His wife, at some point after, might check the metrics, either with a sense of concern or amusement.

“She looks at my phone and wants to see my heart rate and make sure I’m OK,” he said. To him, it’s no big deal, and he relayed what he might say: “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m just having fun.

“But she does make fun of me, how animated I get on the sideline.”

And yet it’s the only way he knows how to coach, he said. There’s few people who appreciate the history of UNC basketball more than Davis, who played for Smith and then worked under Williams for almost a decade.

When Davis became head coach in 2021, he said he wanted to “follow in the footsteps” of those who came before him — but that “you have to walk that path in your own shoes.” And so the stomping and twirling and clapping and all that comes with it is Davis being Davis.

Smith, for decades, was more reserved. Williams much more animated.

And Davis the most animated of all, when the moment calls for it. The longer UNC plays in the NCAA Tournament, the more the emotion and energy might pour out of him. The stakes will rise, along with the intensity and stress. This time of year has a way of bringing it out of him.

It’s win or go home. It’s the livest of action, starting now.