Doherty doesn't deserve this. (College Basketball).(basketball coach Matt Doherty)

It may be tough to remember now, but there was a time when North Carolina did not operate its program as though it were Hickory High, allowing the players to dictate policy and the rowdier members of the community to escalate negative perceptions of the coach.

Hard to believe the program that gave us Phil Ford, James Worthy, Kenny Smith and Antawn Jamison now has witless athletic director Dick Baddour agreeing to meet with players and parents to evaluate the performance of coach Matt Doherty.

North Carolina's second-biggest mistake of this decade was hiring Doherty to be head coach after he had spent a single year in that position at Notre Dame. He was not qualified to handle the pressure of coaching beneath the specter of two ACC legends: Carolina's Dean Smith and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski.

The greatest blunder, though, has been the university's failure to properly support the coach it chose.

Doherty was hired for the wrong reasons--it wasn't because he had built up such an impressive body of work that he stood out above all candidates, but because he had built the foundation of a promising coaching career and once played for Smith.

North Carolina is just plain lucky Doherty turned out to be as good as he is. Since he was hired, Doherty has surpassed reasonable expectations in nearly every department:

Root coaching. His first team shared the ACC regular-season title with Duke, the eventual 2001 national champion, and that got him The Associated Press' Coach of the Year award. This season, the Tar Heels won the Preseason NIT with a freshman-dominated team. And despite the loss of center Sean May to injury, they won 19 games and took March victories over Sweet 16 teams Duke and Maryland.