The realization hit RJ Davis when he woke up on Saturday morning: the next time his head would hit the pillow, he would have played his last game in the Dean E. Smith Center.
He visualized how he wanted the game to go, embracing the feelings and emotions. The reigning ACC Player of the Year and First-Team All-American pictured himself in front of 22,000 fans, in the arena where he holds the single-game scoring record. Where his jersey will one day hang honored in the rafters.
He saw himself raining threes and doing his patented 3-point goggles celebration, fulfilling the dream of a young basketball player who wore goggles.“‘Just do it for you,’” Davis said. “‘You owe it to yourself.’ And I kept telling myself that. Because I felt like the journey I had, the career I had, it was all looking back on the little kid who had a dream to be in this position.”
Davis wanted a fairytale victory over juggernaut No. 2 Duke. It was his 170th game as a Tar Heel — a number that surpassed Armando Bacot for the all-time ACC and UNC records. He rained threes, scoring a game-high 20 points and inspired a North Carolina comeback after the Blue Devils built a 15-point lead in the first half. But it was not enough. UNC faded late and fell short, 82-69, in the regular-season finale. The Tar Heels led by seven with 15:44 to play before Duke closed on a 33-13 run.
“A lot of those [emotions] going through my head right now,” Davis said. “The best way to put it is hurt.”
That Davis was in the jersey and the building he was on Saturday, having accomplished so much in both, was the result of pure chance more than five years ago.
Then-assistant coach Hubert Davis took a red-eye flight and arrived in Atlanta for a Nike Circuit AAU event before the 8 a.m. games. It was the only day he would be at the event. Davis asked then-head coach Roy Williams if he could roam around the 12 different courts instead of staying at just one. Williams said yes.So Hubert Davis roamed. But he kept turning around. He saw a kid make a three. Then he walked some more. Then he saw the same kid make another three. He saw him get a steal, score a layup and make a nice assist.
“I found myself at that court almost the whole time,” Hubert Davis said. “And I came back to coach Williams, and I was like, ‘there’s this kid named RJ Davis that’s pretty good. I think we need to take a look at him. He just plays the right way and looks like a really good kid.’”
The rest is history. RJ Davis went from playing his first game in the Smith Center in front of cardboard cutouts to beating Duke in the Final Four and competing for a national championship. He chose to stay at UNC for all five years. Now a graduate student, Davis said he’s learned a lot and wouldn’t want this chapter of his life to be any different. He’s enjoyed it all, from the high of beating Duke in Mike Krzyzewski’slast game in Cameron Indoor Stadium, to the low of missing the NCAA tournament as the preseason No. 1 in 2023.
“It just gave me a clear picture of what life is,” Davis said before the Duke game. “The legacy that I’ve built, I think it has a common theme of dealing with adversity and how to overcome that. That’s what I really preach on and harp on because that’s what life throws at you.”
“Sometimes life will go your way, sometimes it won’t. And how you respond to that really defines who you are as a person. That’s how I envision my last five years of being here. The legacy I’ve built here has been phenomenal. And I’m just proud of the way that I persevered through it all.”
