Seth Trimble Feels Duty for UNC to Deliver, Ease Pressure on Hubert Davis

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As the only four-year veteran on North Carolina’s roster and the team’s recognized voice of leadership now, Seth Trimble said Tuesday that delivering a successful season to alleviate the inherent pressure on coach Hubert Davis should be among the chief responsibilities the Tar Heels bear in the approaching season.

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“Because that’s what Coach Davis deserves,” Trimble said frankly at ACC Tipoff. “He’s the one who gets all of the slaughter. He gets his name thrashed. And he goes through it every season, through a good season or a bad season. You hear what people have to say about him, and that’s my guy.”

Then, Trimble paused for a moment here at the league’s preseason basketball event, and took a glance to his far right. Across the way, on the other side of a ballroom at the Hilton Uptown, reporters were gathered around the 55-year-old Davis, who’s entering his fifth season in charge at UNC.

“The guys on the court will say it, the guys on my team, that we’re his guys,” Trimble said, beginning again. “And he’s our guy. So we want to put him back up top. We want to win for him, and we want to just show the coach that he really is.”

The senior guard Trimble’s candid words there conveyed a dutiful tone, with the Tar Heels inside of four weeks to their Nov. 3 season opener against Central Arkansas. Later this month, UNC has a high-profile exhibition game at BYU (Oct. 24), and another exhibition game against Winston-Salem State (Oct. 29) to use for preparation in ramping up ahead of the new season.

Davis, general manager Jim Tanner and the Tar Heels have committed an investment of more than $14 million toward an overhauled roster that includes six additions through the NCAA transfer portal (Kyan Evans, Ivan Matlekovic, Jonathan Powell, Jarin Stevenson, Henri Veesaar, Jaydon Young), three freshman recruits (Isaiah Denis, Derek Dixon, Caleb Wilson), and an international import (Luka Bogavac) with professional experience in Europe.

“I know that we need to perform,” Trimble said Tuesday. “I know that we need to go be a great team. … Guys want to win and guys are desperate here to win. And guys are hungry here to win. And guys want to put North Carolina back on top of the pedestal.”

Davis’s UNC teams have compiled an overall record of 101-45, with a 56-24 mark in ACC league play. He’s the third-fastest coach at Carolina to reach 100 career victories, and sixth-fastest in ACC history, behind only Duke’s Vic Bubas (in 128 games), UNC’s Roy Williams (129 games), Wake Forest’s Skip Prosser (136 games), UNC’s Frank McGuire (139 games) and Maryland’s Lefty Driesell (142 games).

The Tar Heels reached the 2022 NCAA championship game in their first season under Davis, and claimed the ACC regular-season title on the way to earning a No. 1 seed assignment in the 2024 NCAA Tournament. But UNC also has made it a habit of sweating out anxious months of March on NCAA bubble watch during  three of the past four seasons. Carolina picked up the final at-large berth in the tournament’s 68-team field last season, before falling in the Round of 64 to finish 23-14 overall.

Since then, Davis has a new boss on board. UNC has hired former NASCAR executive Steve Newmark as its athletics director in waiting. He’s working alongside the outgoing Bubba Cunningham until next summer, when the AD job changes hands.

“I feel the same way that I’ve felt the last four years, Davis said in September at the Smith Center. “There is a pressure and expectation for us to be good this year. But that pressure and that expectation for us to be good is no different than any other year. The standard is at the highest here, and I always talk to the guys, ‘the standard is the standard.’ And there’s an expectation every year for us to reach that standard.”