What Louisville, Duke basketball's new coaches can learn from UNC's Hubert Davis

CHARLOTTE — Kenny Payne found a fleeting moment to himself, and the new Louisville men’s basketball coach had settled into a soft chair just away from the fray at last week’s ACC Tipoff.

It was Payne’s first experience at the league’s media day event, and for more than three hours he’d been speaking — on a dais; to a scrum of reporters in a breakout room; on a string of radio shows — with what must have seemed like barely a breath in between.

When Duke coach Jon Scheyer approached and shook his hand and asked how he was, Payne smiled, gave a weary shake of his head and said, “I’m hangin’, man.”

The two had a brief chat — Scheyer noted that Payne had been the first coach to take the stage that day, so he’d been at this longer than anyone — and parted ways, Payne winding down his stay, Scheyer off to his next required appearance.

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As a new college basketball season dawns, though, they’re connected by more than a moment.

Like Payne, Scheyer is a longtime assistant beginning his first-ever season as a head coach. And he’s doing it at his alma mater, a tradition-rich program handed over to a promising but unproven former player.

The two are following in the footsteps of another man who made the media rounds here. North Carolina’s Hubert Davis took over at his alma mater last season, righting a tumultuous Tar Heel start and guiding UNC to a national runner-up finish.

“It's just a surreal feeling, right?” Scheyer said. “Like, the decision you make when you're 16, 17 or 18, where you go to that school, never once did it cross my mind that, 'Oh, and then you're gonna come back and be the (coach).' It just evolves. And the responsibility is great.”

Scheyer — like Davis before him — has the added burden of succeeding a legend. A longtime assistant to Mike Krzyzewski, Scheyer is taking over for the five-time national championship winner, who retired last season after 42 years with the Blue Devils.

Davis succeeded Roy Williams, who won three titles in 18 years at North Carolina after 15 seasons at Kansas.

Payne has no such pedigreed predecessor.

He’s taking over a Louisville program that went 13-19 a season ago and parted ways in January with coach Chris Mack; a program that hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2019 and hasn’t advanced to its second weekend since 2015.

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That doesn’t mean Payne’s job is easy.

His fellow alums in the ACC took over peaking programs. Payne is charged with pulling Louisville out of a valley.

“The obligation that I feel for my school and the pressure to make everybody happy, it never goes away,” Payne said. “Before I go to sleep at night, I'm thinking about it.”

As one of the few men in power-program basketball who can relate, Scheyer said he has "a lot of empathy for how Kenny could feel that way.”

There’s a weight to coaching at a place like Duke, North Carolina or Louisville.

And the load can feel heavier when there’s a personal connection to the place.

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There can be greater worry about letting down the people who share your affinity. And who care deeply about you as a former player.

As Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said, “Everybody loves Jon Scheyer now.”

The implication is those fans can turn quickly. Boeheim should know. He’s entering his 46th season as the head coach at his alma mater. And he watched last season as North Carolina fans speculated — often quite publicly — about Davis’s fitness for the job after an 18-8 start that included a home loss to lowly Pitt that seemed a major blow to the Tar Heels’ NCAA Tournament chances.

Boeheim didn’t think many Carolina fans expected a Final Four run after that.

“But I could be wrong,” he said with a smirk.

Davis won back fans with postseason success, and they’re in his corner now with a team expected to enter the season as the national title favorite.

If the struggles of that season took a toll, Davis doesn’t show it.

He will tell you he’s living his dream, that he does it every day on the job. When he retired from the NBA, he and his wife chose to make Chapel Hill, North Carolina, their home. Davis lived there even before he joined Williams’s staff as an assistant coach.

“That's why I can say that it's not a job for me,” Davis said. “It's missionary work. Because it's a place that I've experienced. It's a place that I have always wanted to be a part of.”

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Scheyer saw a lesson in Davis’s shaky start and fantastic finish.

“They went through ups and downs, and he just stuck with it,” Scheyer said. "I think that's what I plan on doing no matter what.”

Payne, too, plans to stay the course whatever happens on the court.

He wants to please the Louisville fans and former players who he told at his introductory news conference “I need you.” But he knows he won’t always. He knows there will be difficult days and that they may come in his first season.

Payne isn’t concerned with any of it. He has a long-term vision he’s confident will work.

“I just want these kids to have the version of Louisville that I experienced,” Payne said. “Where it was about love. It was about community. It was about supporting when it was down; enjoying the times when it's up.”

That desire to pass on his own experience — and to be a steward of the program where he played — is a trait he shares with Scheyer and Davis.

They’re passionate. And this is personal.

“All three of us, we're not going into (a recruit’s) house or school and telling them to come to a school that we don't believe in,” Scheyer said. “Like, I made this decision, right? (Payne and Davis) made that decision for their school. So I know we're all proud of where we come from, and to be here, it's a great responsibility and opportunity to lead our programs to the next chapter.”

Reach Louisville men’s basketball reporter Brett Dawson at mdawson@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter at @BDawsonWrites.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: ACC basketball: New Louisville, Duke coaches can learn from UNC