.png&width=36&height=36&type=webp)
Photo by: ANTHONY SORBELLINI
Lucas: Sevens
February 27, 2024 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
RJ Davis put up a big number in style against Miami.
By Adam Lucas
A soaking wet RJ Davis sat down on a stool just outside the North Carolina locker room.
Davis correctly observed, "I look like I've been in the pool." Water was dripping off his uniform onto the floor. After he scored 42 points in Carolina's 75-71 win over Miami, his teammates had doused him with water on the court, then got him again when he entered the locker room.
He sat there, dripping, and was handed a stat sheet. The numbers were astonishing. He had scored 42 points. He had made 14 of his 22 field goal attempts. He shot seven for 11 from the three-point line. He made seven free throws. Add it together, and he scored a whopping 42 points. There have been 562 games of basketball played in the history of the Dean E. Smith Center, with the very best players in college basketball regularly making appearances at the arena, both for Carolina and for the opposition.
Never, in those 562 games, has any player on any team scored more than RJ Davis' 42 points. Do you understand how good this was? Of all those players who have played in all of those games at the Smith Center, the only one who has ever been within a field goal of Davis is Tyler Hansbrough.
Regardless of venue, the last Tar Heel who scored more than RJ Davis was Charles Scott. That was in January of 1970, over 54 years ago. Hubert Davis had not yet been born.
That's the historical context of the stat sheet RJ Davis was perusing. When he grabbed the corner of the piece of paper, it instantly moistened. His eyes moved up and down the page.
This is the first thing he said:
"I missed those two free throws. I'm trash."
The White Plains native didn't do much wrong on this particular Monday evening. But he was absolutely incorrect about that assessment. This was one of the most incredible performances in the modern era of Tar Heel basketball. Even in the three-point shot generation, individual scoring games like this one just don't happen anymore.
There are nine scoring games in Carolina basketball history—the entire history of the program—that surpass what Davis did against Miami. Scott's 43 is the only one that happened after 1965. Think about that for a second. Jordan, Jamison, Worthy, Hansbrough, Perkins, Ford…some great scorers have played at Carolina during that span. Not a single one of them ever did this.
"He put the entire team on his back," Hubert Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network. "He was unbelievable on both ends of the floor. From the start, he was the one guy who had tremendous rhythm. I've seen a number of games here and in the NBA. There are very few times I've seen a performance like that."
The way the head coach put it—"tremendous rhythm"—was insightful. From the start, RJ Davis was finding space on the floor where there didn't appear to be space. His very first basket, a three-pointer, came after he dribbled across the free throw line, took a hard step back, eyed the basket, and swished a jumper. There really wasn't a shooting lane—until he created it.
Later in the first half, he did it again, this time catching the ball on the right wing, never slowing down on the catch, driving hard with one dribble to his left, then leaping and scoring with his left hand over the 6-foot-7 Norchad Omier.
These are not normal shots. These are not easy shots. And these are just two of the 14 field goals he made against the Hurricanes.
Fittingly, it was a perfectly symmetrical distribution—Davis made seven three-point shots, seven two-point shots, and seven free throws. That was a nice testament to the way he's expanded his game since he arrived at Carolina. To paraphrase Danny Green from a memorable Smith Center celebration in 2009, it wasn't just the fact that Davis did it...it was how he did it.
Davis was noticeably taken aback when informed of the triple sevens.
"First and foremost, seven is a family number to me," he said. "It's always been in my family, that anything that happens, a seven always appears."
The Davis home address includes a seven. His brother, Bryce, signed his football letter of intent on February 7. Davis is the seventh New York point guard to come to Carolina.
"For that to be the way I score 42," Davis said, "is crazy."
It was most definitely crazy. It feels like this game might be remembered in two very different ways. If you watched on television, you of course acknowledge that Davis had a heroic scoring performance, but probably also will lose sleep tonight thinking about Carolina's late-game execution (or lack thereof).
But if you were in the building, and experienced the energy that crackled every time Davis dribbled the ball, you will think of it differently.
Jim Larranaga is a veteran coach who understands how to slow down a hot shooter. He came out after halftime with what felt like a good adjustment: he put 6-foot-7 Matthew Cleveland on Davis, forcing the smaller player to score over some impressive height. After all, Davis had already scored 21 first half points. Something had to be done to slow him down.
With the entire defense altered to stop him, this was the result: he scored 21 more points in the second half. Remember--if Miami could have slowed down Davis even a little bit, they would have won the game. He was the only Tar Heel in double figures on a night when everyone else struggled to shoot. Instead, he made basket after basket.
This is no exaggeration: by the time Davis hit the step-back three-pointer that gave him 39 points with 4:15 left in the game, there were Tar Heel fans running up and down the aisles of the Smith Center in celebration. After the next timeout, when Davis did nothing more than come back on the court to play defense, they chanted, loudly and repeatedly, "RJ! RJ! RJ!"
As much as the crowd seemed to love it, his teammates enjoyed it just as much. While Davis lingered on the court to do a postgame television interview, Zayden High and James Okonkwo waited in the tunnel for him, not wanting him to return to the locker room alone.
That's the response you get from your teammates when you have the kind of year Davis is having…while playing the way he is playing. When he was sitting on 33 points, he had a wide-open look for another three-pointer—and instead chose to whip a one-handed pass to Armando Bacot, who promptly drew a fourth foul on Miami stalwart Norchad Omier, who ultimately fouled out of the game. Davis isn't just making scoring plays. He's making winning plays.
"I'm speechless," Davis said a few minutes after the game, after his new place in the record book had been relayed to him. "It hasn't fully hit me yet. So many iconic players have played here. I'm grateful for the opportunity, grateful to be able to play, and grateful to pull through with a win."
Hubert Davis was predictably not pleased with his team's play in the final minutes. That's his job; he's obligated to feel that way.
The rest of us, though, need to take at least one night to marvel at a performance that the majority of us have never seen before, and there's no guarantee we will see again. On this night, for these two hours, we were there for the greatest scoring performance by a Tar Heel in our lifetimes.
Bobby Lewis.
Billy Cunningham.
Lennie Rosenbluth.
George Glamack.
Charles Scott.
That's the complete list of North Carolina basketball players who have scored more points in a single game than RJ Davis. Jerseys in the rafters, all of them. Davis, soon to join that company.
Someday, someone will get 38 or 39 points. And we'll be able to say, "I remember the night RJ had 42," and we'll tell them about chanting, "RJ! RJ!" and high-fiving strangers as his point total kept climbing.
Even the head coach, who was already listing problems he planned to rectify in practice later this week, was nothing but effusive about RJ Davis.
"This has been RJ all year," Hubert Davis said. "He's having an unbelievable, unprecedented year."
And he is most definitely not trash.
A soaking wet RJ Davis sat down on a stool just outside the North Carolina locker room.
Davis correctly observed, "I look like I've been in the pool." Water was dripping off his uniform onto the floor. After he scored 42 points in Carolina's 75-71 win over Miami, his teammates had doused him with water on the court, then got him again when he entered the locker room.
He sat there, dripping, and was handed a stat sheet. The numbers were astonishing. He had scored 42 points. He had made 14 of his 22 field goal attempts. He shot seven for 11 from the three-point line. He made seven free throws. Add it together, and he scored a whopping 42 points. There have been 562 games of basketball played in the history of the Dean E. Smith Center, with the very best players in college basketball regularly making appearances at the arena, both for Carolina and for the opposition.
Never, in those 562 games, has any player on any team scored more than RJ Davis' 42 points. Do you understand how good this was? Of all those players who have played in all of those games at the Smith Center, the only one who has ever been within a field goal of Davis is Tyler Hansbrough.
Regardless of venue, the last Tar Heel who scored more than RJ Davis was Charles Scott. That was in January of 1970, over 54 years ago. Hubert Davis had not yet been born.
That's the historical context of the stat sheet RJ Davis was perusing. When he grabbed the corner of the piece of paper, it instantly moistened. His eyes moved up and down the page.
This is the first thing he said:
"I missed those two free throws. I'm trash."
The White Plains native didn't do much wrong on this particular Monday evening. But he was absolutely incorrect about that assessment. This was one of the most incredible performances in the modern era of Tar Heel basketball. Even in the three-point shot generation, individual scoring games like this one just don't happen anymore.
There are nine scoring games in Carolina basketball history—the entire history of the program—that surpass what Davis did against Miami. Scott's 43 is the only one that happened after 1965. Think about that for a second. Jordan, Jamison, Worthy, Hansbrough, Perkins, Ford…some great scorers have played at Carolina during that span. Not a single one of them ever did this.
"He put the entire team on his back," Hubert Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network. "He was unbelievable on both ends of the floor. From the start, he was the one guy who had tremendous rhythm. I've seen a number of games here and in the NBA. There are very few times I've seen a performance like that."
The way the head coach put it—"tremendous rhythm"—was insightful. From the start, RJ Davis was finding space on the floor where there didn't appear to be space. His very first basket, a three-pointer, came after he dribbled across the free throw line, took a hard step back, eyed the basket, and swished a jumper. There really wasn't a shooting lane—until he created it.
Later in the first half, he did it again, this time catching the ball on the right wing, never slowing down on the catch, driving hard with one dribble to his left, then leaping and scoring with his left hand over the 6-foot-7 Norchad Omier.
These are not normal shots. These are not easy shots. And these are just two of the 14 field goals he made against the Hurricanes.
Fittingly, it was a perfectly symmetrical distribution—Davis made seven three-point shots, seven two-point shots, and seven free throws. That was a nice testament to the way he's expanded his game since he arrived at Carolina. To paraphrase Danny Green from a memorable Smith Center celebration in 2009, it wasn't just the fact that Davis did it...it was how he did it.
Davis was noticeably taken aback when informed of the triple sevens.
"First and foremost, seven is a family number to me," he said. "It's always been in my family, that anything that happens, a seven always appears."
The Davis home address includes a seven. His brother, Bryce, signed his football letter of intent on February 7. Davis is the seventh New York point guard to come to Carolina.
"For that to be the way I score 42," Davis said, "is crazy."
It was most definitely crazy. It feels like this game might be remembered in two very different ways. If you watched on television, you of course acknowledge that Davis had a heroic scoring performance, but probably also will lose sleep tonight thinking about Carolina's late-game execution (or lack thereof).
But if you were in the building, and experienced the energy that crackled every time Davis dribbled the ball, you will think of it differently.
Jim Larranaga is a veteran coach who understands how to slow down a hot shooter. He came out after halftime with what felt like a good adjustment: he put 6-foot-7 Matthew Cleveland on Davis, forcing the smaller player to score over some impressive height. After all, Davis had already scored 21 first half points. Something had to be done to slow him down.
With the entire defense altered to stop him, this was the result: he scored 21 more points in the second half. Remember--if Miami could have slowed down Davis even a little bit, they would have won the game. He was the only Tar Heel in double figures on a night when everyone else struggled to shoot. Instead, he made basket after basket.
This is no exaggeration: by the time Davis hit the step-back three-pointer that gave him 39 points with 4:15 left in the game, there were Tar Heel fans running up and down the aisles of the Smith Center in celebration. After the next timeout, when Davis did nothing more than come back on the court to play defense, they chanted, loudly and repeatedly, "RJ! RJ! RJ!"
As much as the crowd seemed to love it, his teammates enjoyed it just as much. While Davis lingered on the court to do a postgame television interview, Zayden High and James Okonkwo waited in the tunnel for him, not wanting him to return to the locker room alone.
That's the response you get from your teammates when you have the kind of year Davis is having…while playing the way he is playing. When he was sitting on 33 points, he had a wide-open look for another three-pointer—and instead chose to whip a one-handed pass to Armando Bacot, who promptly drew a fourth foul on Miami stalwart Norchad Omier, who ultimately fouled out of the game. Davis isn't just making scoring plays. He's making winning plays.
"I'm speechless," Davis said a few minutes after the game, after his new place in the record book had been relayed to him. "It hasn't fully hit me yet. So many iconic players have played here. I'm grateful for the opportunity, grateful to be able to play, and grateful to pull through with a win."
Hubert Davis was predictably not pleased with his team's play in the final minutes. That's his job; he's obligated to feel that way.
The rest of us, though, need to take at least one night to marvel at a performance that the majority of us have never seen before, and there's no guarantee we will see again. On this night, for these two hours, we were there for the greatest scoring performance by a Tar Heel in our lifetimes.
Bobby Lewis.
Billy Cunningham.
Lennie Rosenbluth.
George Glamack.
Charles Scott.
That's the complete list of North Carolina basketball players who have scored more points in a single game than RJ Davis. Jerseys in the rafters, all of them. Davis, soon to join that company.
Someday, someone will get 38 or 39 points. And we'll be able to say, "I remember the night RJ had 42," and we'll tell them about chanting, "RJ! RJ!" and high-fiving strangers as his point total kept climbing.
Even the head coach, who was already listing problems he planned to rectify in practice later this week, was nothing but effusive about RJ Davis.
"This has been RJ all year," Hubert Davis said. "He's having an unbelievable, unprecedented year."
And he is most definitely not trash.
Players Mentioned
F/C
/ Men's Basketball
F
/ Men's Basketball
F
/ Men's BasketballUNC Volleyball: Carolina Sweeps #11 Florida
Wednesday, September 10
Bill Belichick Coach's Corner - Episode 3 - September 9, 2025
Tuesday, September 09
FB: Players Pre-Richmond Press Conference, 9/9/25
Tuesday, September 09
FB: Players Pre-Richmond Press Conference
Tuesday, September 09