Lucas: The Backyard

By Adam Lucas

You should know that RJ Davis has done this before.

Not score 36 points. That's his career high, of course, the total he put up in Monday night's 85-64 win over Wake Forest. He's never done that before.

The rest of this, though, felt familiar to him. Even when he hit the 30-point mark with nine minutes left in the game, he knew that feeling. Breaking the 30 barrier came while being defended by Hunter Sallis, a good player who had a very difficult assignment.

Sitting on 28 points, Davis got the ball near midcourt in the middle of the floor. Took a couple of dribbles to his left. Then crossed over and went hard to his right, by which time Sallis was already reeling backwards, on his heels, and off balance.

But hold on a second. Davis hesitated just a second and it looked like he might fire a three-pointer. The old RJ probably takes that shot. Not senior year RJ. Senior year RJ realizes his defender is on ice.

So he jabs hard back to his left, using some traffic created by Armando Bacot. Now he's inside the three-point line. Maybe a pull-up?

Nah, not yet. A slight hesitation, one more dribble, and now he's at the free throw line. Efton Reid, listed in your program at 7-foot-0, is one step away. No problem. Davis just lofts a teardrop floater, gets the basket, and Carolina leads by 16 points and is coasting.

Now do you have a little better sense of what it's like to guard RJ Davis? He could have taken the three-pointer…could have fired the pull-up…could even have driven all the way to the rim…and instead he scored on a floater. All four of those options have to be on the scouting report. Very, very few guards in the Atlantic Coast Conference present that many problems.

Davis grinned when he recalled the play. "It feels," he said on the Tar Heel Sports Network, "like you're in your backyard. You're out there just trying things out. That's when you're in that zone. A lot of hoopers know that when you're in that zone, it's hard to come out of it. I felt comfortable and confident and like I could get to my spots.
"I wanted to shoot the three. But I knew the coaches would get mad, so I got the floater."

At this point, it's very difficult to imagine Carolina's coaching staff getting mad at RJ Davis for anything. Well, wait a second.

There was a moment in the second half when the Smith Center video boards showed a series of Davis highlights. It was during a timeout and he had already broken the 30-point mark. He was shooting jumpers and getting to the basket and, well, it made for a very pretty series of highlights…as Davis himself noticed. Even he couldn't help but sneak a peek.

"A little bit!" he said with a big laugh when told afterwards he'd been caught taking a glance during the dead ball. "Low key, I was. Those highlights caught me by surprise, because I was out there hooping!"

Davis can get away with saying things like this because he seems so decidedly unimpressed by his own performance. "I really wanted to get 40," he said before going on the air for the radio interview, as if he needed to apologize. But then during the interview he proceeded to name every single one of his teammates, individually by name, when explaining how he had such a good offensive performance. It was them getting him the ball, you see, or them making other shots that kept the defense honest for him, or them setting screens that freed him.

And he's right. This is not a one-man show. It doesn't feel like he's hunting his shot, even while he's having an All-America type of season. But some of the credit goes to RJ Davis, too. This wasn't just a shooter getting hot from three-point range and putting up a big number.

When Davis scored 30 points against Baylor during his sophomore season, he made three two-point shots. When he scored 30 against Arkansas earlier this season, he converted seven two-point baskets.

On Monday, he made ten of them. That's a player who is developing, who hasn't stopped adding to his game, with some of that work put in one-on-one with Hubert Davis in the hours before practice over the last two-plus seasons. The head coach and player have spent numerous sessions trying to hone the finer details, including Hubert Davis showing RJ video of Trae Young to illustrate the way the floater could make the Tar Heel a more complete player.

"He has to have that shot," Hubert Davis says. "If it's done right, whether off one foot or two feet, it's unblockable. RJ does that really well, and that's because of his hard work."

Hard work that has taken him a long way from that backyard in White Plains, N.Y. And created experiences that weren't even replicated in his wildest dreams back then.

"I always used to count down the clock," RJ Davis said of those afternoons and evening in the yard. "5-4-3-2-1 and then I'd take the shot."

Even then, though, the imaginary crowd wasn't chanting his name. That's what they were doing Monday night when he exited the game, pulled by Hubert Davis so he could soak in the cheers from the crowd of over 21,000. "RJ, RJ, RJ!" they chanted.

"I was at a loss for words," the object of those chants said. "I was in shock. Harrison (Ingram) told me to smile. I was like, 'What do you want me to do, wave my hands in the air?' I really didn't know what to do. But it was such a great feeling."

And a long way from that backyard.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

RJ Davis

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