CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — RJ Davis accomplished enough in four years at North Carolina for his jersey to eventually earn a place among the honored numbers in the Smith Center’s rafters for the blueblood program.
Yet he’s still here.
“With five years, I know some people may say, ‘Oh, you need to go get a job now,’” Davis said with a chuckle.
It’s the last ride for Davis — the lone returning Associated Press first-team men’s All-American from last season — and most players who gained an extra year of eligibility amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which largely cycles out of men’s and women’s basketball this season. It has been the most unusual of recent landscape-shifting changes in college sports, one that temporarily replaced a bedrock tenet of athletes having a four-season run with a salve for competing amid empty arenas, campus bubbles and endless nose-swab testing during the 2020-21 season.
Its impact has been massive. Rules arriving concurrently allowed players to move freely between schools through the transfer portal and cash in on fame through name, image and likeness (NIL) activities, a blended enticement to stick around college rather than leaving to chase potential professional careers. That in turn made rosters older, with coaches preferring veteran additions to freshmen after recent examples of how experience wins in March.
Fifth-year players start this year in the spotlight, headlined by Davis with the ninth-ranked Tar Heels and fellow preseason AP All-Americans Hunter Dickinson of top-ranked Kansas, No. 2 Alabama’s Mark Sears, No. 10 Arizona’s Caleb Love — who started his career alongside Davis at UNC — and No. 11 Auburn’s Johni Broome.
Davis is the only one of that group to stay at one school.
“I think we’re in a time now where having experienced players and players coming back for another year has brought college basketball — in my eyes at least — back to life,” Davis said in an AP interview. “It gives more of like a story behind it.
“You have guys that have been one-and-dones, but not a lot of people talk about the guys that stayed for more than two years. I feel like their stories are something that need to be told as well. And I love that.”
According to NCAA data, the average experience level for Division I men’s players stood at 2.41 years for 2018-19, the last full season untouched by the pandemic, but has risen to 2.62 years for 2024-25. Yet that data is based on a four-year scale, meaning it doesn't tell the full story on how players in fifth years or beyond would drive that figure even higher.
Consider Louisville, Xavier and Middle Tennessee. The Cardinals, Musketeers and Blue Raiders were among the oldest rosters with a combined average experience level of 3.37 years. But each features roughly a half-dozen fifth-year players (or older, in some cases), and updating the data to more precisely capture that pushes their combined average to 3.78 years.
“This is the way I’ve looked at it recently: you’re really giving somebody — it’s not just adding a year,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said earlier this year. “You’re adding a year to the best years they have. … It’s a big advantage.”
A look at the recent Final Four lineups backs Scheyer. In 2022, North Carolina and Villanova each had at least one fifth-year starter. San Diego State, Miami and Florida Atlantic did it a year later.
By last April, all four teams had at least one, from Cam Spencer as the No. 2 scorer (14.3) in UConn’s run to a repeat NCAA title to N.C. State having three ( DJ Horne, D.J. Burns Jr., and Casey Morsell) in its surprise run to that program’s first Final Four since 1983.
Conversely, there’s been only one first-year freshman starter in the past two Final Fours: UConn one-and-done guard Stephon Castle last year.
The value of experience weighed on Sears’ mind in returning after the Crimson Tide’s first Final Four run.
“I saw the team that we had and I wanted to be a part of it and bring home Alabama’s first national championship in basketball,” said Sears, who started his career at Ohio.
Still, while Scheyer felt pandemic-impacted players deserved the extra year, he’s ready for it to end. So too is Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner Jim Phillips.
“It’s time to move forward, because what this has caused also is a pushback on freshmen and younger players and opportunities because some of the student-athletes with additional years have been kept in the system,” Phillips told the AP. “And I think the health of college sports remains this opportunity to come in and play four years and then move out, either graduate or move out to the pros.”
Michigan State Hall of Fame coach Tom Izzo went further, calling the extra eligibility year a “good intention” that might have been a “mistake” in hindsight.
“It sounded fair and good, but when you added that with the NIL and the transfer portal, it’s been absolute chaos,” Izzo said.
“I was talking to a guy today whose son, he was developing fine,” Izzo added. “And all of a sudden there was some pressure on the coach. … And they bring in a couple of guys, so now he doesn’t get a chance to develop. You wonder, you always hear it’s good, that players should be able to go and do what they want to do. But they affect other players’ lives. To be honest with you, I still think it’s a mess.”
There’s no doubt that managing rosters and scholarships has gotten trickier. But there's also value in name recognition for fans seeing top talents stick around longer compared to the past focus on the one-and-done NBA talents.
At minimum, it easily lends itself to quips about college players' age, such as LSU coach Matt McMahon facing Auburn’s Broome again after their previous Ohio Valley Conference meetings at Murray State and Morehead State, respectively.
“It seems like it’s been a decade or so coaching against him,” McMahon said.
Davis has seen plenty, too.
The 6-footer arrived in Chapel Hill in fall 2020 for Hall of Famer Roy Williams' final season and took part in the bubbled 2021 NCAA Tournament in Indiana. Then, after Hubert Davis took over for the retiring Williams, the Tar Heels made a wild ride to the 2022 title game only to follow that by becoming the first preseason AP No. 1-ranked team to miss the NCAA tourney in 2023.
But Davis took a huge leap to become the ACC’s scoring leader (21.2), set the 38-year-old Smith Center’s single-game scoring record (42 points against Miami) and won the Jerry West Award as the nation's top shooting guard as the Tar Heels won the ACC regular-season race and earned a No. 1 NCAA seed.
“One thing about me that I’ve learned throughout my time here," he said, “is to accept and adapt to changes.”
And there could be one more big one ahead.
Davis closed his first four seasons ranked fifth on UNC's career scoring list (2,088 points). If he matches last year’s scoring total, he’ll tie program great Tyler Hansbrough (2,872) for the school and ACC career scoring record.
He shrugs off discounting that potential moment because he’ll have had an extra year of production to get there, pointing to the same mantra — “It’s proving myself right rather than listening to other people’s opinions,” he said — that has brought him to this point.
And he's eager to savor this final year, whatever it holds.
“I think it’s embracing the time here, whatever school you’re at,” Davis said. “It’s great. Sometimes four may not be enough.”
AP Sports Writers Larry Lage in Michigan and John Zenor in Alabama contributed to this report.”
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FILE - TCU center Ernest Udeh Jr. (8) guards Kansas center Hunter Dickinson (1) during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Lawrence, Kan., Jan. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann, File)
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Two Israeli airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday killed at least 88 people, including dozens of women and children, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
Israel has escalated its airstrikes and waged a bigger ground operation in northern Gaza in recent weeks, saying it is focused on rooting out Hamas militants who have regrouped after more than a year of war. The intense fighting is raising alarm about the worsening humanitarian conditions for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still in northern Gaza.
Concerns about not enough aid reaching Gaza were amplified Monday when Israeli lawmakers passed two laws to cut ties with the main U.N. agency distributing food, water and medicine, and to ban it from Israeli soil. Israel controls access to both Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and it was unclear how the agency known as UNRWA would continue its work in either place.
“The humanitarian operation in Gaza, if that is unraveled, that is a disaster within a series of disasters and just doesn’t bear thinking about," said UNRWA spokesperson John Fowler. He said other U.N. agencies and international organizations distributing aid in Gaza rely on its logistics and thousands of workers.
In Lebanon, the militant group Hezbollah said Tuesday it has chosen Sheikh Naim Kassem to succeed longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month. Hezbollah, which has fired rockets into Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, vowed to continue with Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”
A short while later, eight Austrian soldiers serving in the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon were reported lightly injured in a midday missile strike.
The peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, said the rocket that struck its headquarters in Lebanon was “likely” fired by Hezbollah, and that it struck a vehicle workshop.
The Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service said at least 70 people were killed and 23 were missing in the first of Tuesday's strikes in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. More than half of the victims were women and children, the ministry said. A mother and her five children — some of them adults — and a second mother with six children, were among those killed in the attack on a five-story building, according to the emergency service.
A second strike on Beit Lahiya on Tuesday evening killed at least 18 people, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count.
The nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital was overwhelmed by the wave of wounded people, according to its director, Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya. Israeli forces raided the medical facility over the weekend, detaining dozens of medics.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the first Beit Lahiya strike; it did not immediately comment on the second.
Israel’s recent operations in northern Gaza, focused in and around the Jabaliya refugee camp, have killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months. It says it carries out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tries to avoid harming civilians, but the strikes often kill women and children.
On Tuesday, Israel said four more of its soldiers were killed in the fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the toll since the start of the operation to 16, including a colonel.
As the fighting raged, Hamas signaled it was ready to resume cease-fire negotiations, although its key demands — a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of the Israeli military — do not appear to have changed, and have been dismissed in the past by Israel. Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said on Tuesday the group has accepted mediators’ request to discuss “new proposals.”
Hezbollah said in a statement that its decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, who had been Nasrallah's deputy leader for over three decades, as the new secretary-general.
Kassem, 71, a founding member of the militant group established following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, had been serving as acting leader. He has given several televised speeches vowing that Hezbollah will fight on despite a string of setbacks.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, drawing retaliation, after Hamas’ surprise attack out of Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered the war there. Iran, which backs both groups, has also directly traded fire with Israel, in April and then again this month.
The tensions with Hezbollah boiled over in September, as Israel unleashed a wave of heavy airstrikes and killed Nasrallah and most of his senior commanders. Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon at the start of October.
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel on Tuesday, killing one person in the northern city of Maalot-Tarshiha, authorities said. Israeli strikes in the coastal city of Sidon killed at least five people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.
UNRWA and other international groups continued to express outrage Tuesday about the Israeli parliament's decision to cut ties to the agency.
Israel says UNRWA has been infiltrated by Hamas and that the militant group siphons off aid and uses U.N. facilities to shield its activities, allegations denied by the U.N. agency.
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer vowed that aid will continue to reach Gaza, as Israel plans to coordinate with aid organizations or other bodies within the U.N. “Ultimately, we will ensure that a more efficient replacement for UNRWA takes its role, not one which is infiltrated by the terrorist organization,” he said.
Multiple U.N. agencies rallied Tuesday around UNRWA, calling it the “backbone” of the world body’s aid activities in Gaza and other Palestinian areas. UNRWA provides education, health care and emergency aid to millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and their descendants. Refugee families make up the majority of Gaza’s population.
Nearly a quarter of UNRWA’s roughly 13,000 staff are health workers who provide services like immunizations, disease surveillance, and screening for malnutrition, according to World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic. UNRWA’s work “couldn’t be matched by any agency -- including WHO,” he said.
Israel has sharply restricted aid to northern Gaza this month, prompting a warning from the United States that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian assistance could lead to a reduction in military aid.
In its attack on Israel last year, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 as hostages. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced from their homes, often multiple times.
Magdy reported from Cairo and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Jamey Keaten in Geneva, contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Rescue workers search for victims at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
Rescue workers use a bulldozer to remove rubbles as they search for victims at a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
An Israeli drone flies over Beirut, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Neighbors clean blood stains from the ceiling of a damaged house where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Neighbors examine the damaged house where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People react at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
People react at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Members of the Israeli police bomb squad work at the site where one person was killed after a projectile launched from Lebanon slammed into Maalot-Tarshiha, northern Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at a hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheik Naim Kassem, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks past the east Jerusalem compound of UNRWA, the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
FILE - Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, listens to a speech by then-leader Hassan Nasrallah on a screen in southern Beirut, Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein, File)
