FILE - North Carolina guard RJ Davis (4) brings the ball down court during the first half of a ... [+]
RJ Davis has been a mainstay on the University of North Carolina’s men’s basketball team since enrolling at the school in the fall of 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, the 6-foot guard announced he would remain with the Tar Heels, taking advantage of an NCAA rule that allows players whose seasons were affected by COVID-19 to have a fifth year of eligibility.
Davis’s return is a boon for him and the Tar Heels. UNC is among the teams that will enter the season as national title contenders, while Davis could be the preseason national player of the year and become the program’s all-time leading scorer.
This past season, Davis averaged 21.2 points, 3.8 rebounds and 3.5 assists per game. He was the Atlantic Coast Conference’s player of the year and a first-team Associated Press All-American. The other four first-team selections either exhausted their college eligibility or declared for the NBA draft, so Davis will be the most accomplished player in college basketball next season. He will likely earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well, thanks to the NCAA allowing players to earn money from their name, image and likeness.
Davis is the first UNC player to return to school after being named a first-team AP All-American since Tyler Hansbrough, who was a first-teamer in the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons. Phil Ford (1976-77 and 1977-78) and Michael Jordan (1982-83 and 1983-84) are the only other UNC players who were two-time first-team All-Americans.
Davis is currently fifth on UNC’s all-time points list (2,088) behind Hansbrough (2,872), Armando Bacot (2,348), Ford (2,290) and Sam Perkins (2,145). If Davis stays healthy, he should easily pass Bacot, Ford and Perkins, and he has a good shot at catching Hansbrough. He needs 785 points to surpass Hansbrough, just one more point than he scored this past season.
If healthy, Davis will also pass Bacot for most games played and minutes played in a UNC career. So far, Davis has appeared in 138 games (31 fewer than Bacot) and 4,410 minutes (356 fewer than Bacot).
With Davis back, the Tar Heels will harbor legitimate hopes of winning the NCAA title. Gary Parrish of CBS Sports, for instance, has UNC ranked third in his latest preseason poll released on Wednesday. Kansas and Houston are first and second, respectively, while two-time reigning national champion Connecticut is fourth.
Besides Davis, UNC is returning two talented guards in Elliot Cadeau (7.3 points and 4.1 assists as a freshman last season) and Seth Trimble (5.2 points as a sophomore last season).
The Tar Heels also added 6-foot-7 forward Cade Tyson, who averaged 16.2 points and shot 46.5% on 3-pointers last season for Belmont University. And they have a talented incoming freshmen class led by 6-foot-5 Ian Jackson and 6-foot-6 Drake Powell, who are 9th and 10th on the 247Sports rankings for the high school Class of 2024. ESPN’s Jonathan Givony had Powell going 10th and Jackson 18th in his 2025 NBA mock draft that was released in late February.
UNC is coming off a season in which it won the ACC regular season title and was the No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament’s West Regional. But the Tar Heels lost, 89-87, to Alabama in the Sweet 16 as Davis made just 4 of 20 field goals and missed each of his nine 3-pointers.
Davis will be looking to bounce back from that poor shooting performance this coming season and put the Tar Heels in position to win their seventh national title, an outcome that doesn’t seem far-fetched now that their All-American is officially back.
