Can UNC basketball salvage a season gone awry? Coach Hubert Davis, players think so
No one at North Carolina expected to be in the first week of February and talking about how to salvage the basketball season.
But, here we are.
After being dismantled by Duke on the first day of the month, the Tar Heels have dipped to 13-10 overall, and are 6-5 and seventh in the ACC. They have a week to prepare for their next game, Saturday at home against Pittsburgh, then must take a quick trip to Clemson two days later.
It won’t get any easier for Carolina. The Tar Heels, beginning with coach Hubert Davis, can only hope it gets better.
Davis still believes that. Fervently. He said it after the 87-70 loss at Duke on Saturday, and said it again Monday during the ACC coaches’ media call.
“Irregardless of where we are now and people’s opinions, this team still has a chance to achieve and experience everything this team wants to achieve and experience,” Davis said Monday. “We have nine more regular-season games left. We have that. We have the ACC tournament. And it’s all under our control in terms of us playing the best we can be. …
“We still have an opportunity to turn this season around, and we need to focus on becoming the best team we can possibly become. And at the end of the day, live with the results.”
How can the Tar Heels do it?
Re-set this week
First things first: The Tar Heels, with no mid-week game, need to use this week to their advantage, both on and off the court, Davis said.
Will there be hard practices? Likely. But there will also be some time to recharge.
“I think it’s coming at the perfect time,” Davis said Monday. “It gives us time to regroup. We get to practice and work on us, rather than prepare for a game mid-week.
“We can get some guys healthy in terms of some bumps and bruises. I think mentally we needed a break. It just comes as a perfect time for us to regroup as a team and refocus on the things we need to do in order to get better and for the outcomes to be better.”
The outcomes have been a problem of late. There was the Duke debacle, but the Tar Heels also lost at Pitt, and needed a last-gasp comeback to get the Boston College game into overtime and win it. Before BC were losses to Stanford and Wake Forest.
After Monday’s games, UNC was No. 44 in the NET rankings used by the NCAA selection committee to set the NCAA tournament field. The Heels’ 1-9 record against Quad-1 teams was the worst among the top 50 teams ranked and matches their Quad-1 record in 2023, when they were left out of the NCAA field.
Strong finish from RJ Davis
There was some chatter before the season that RJ Davis could be in the conversation for national player of the year after being the ACC’s player of the year in 2023-24.
Duke’s Cooper Flagg pretty much ended that discussion and debate.
Before the Duke game, Davis talked of how he placed too much pressure on himself early in the season to be too good. He said he now was letting the game come to him rather than trying to force things, and with better results. More 3-pointers were falling and Davis is in a better offensive rhythm.
“I’m not thinking as much,” he said last week. “I’m proud of the way I’ve been persevering and obviously battling with a lot of mental thoughts and overthinking, second-guessing myself while playing,
“I kind of let go a little bit and I wasn’t really trying to be perfect and trying to tell myself I have to make every single shot. So I told myself to let go and play with a sense of freedom.”
Davis had 12 points in the loss at Duke on a night when nothing went very well for the Heels. But he needs to continue to “let go” and play big for the Heels to turn around a season gone awry.
Granted, Davis needs help. Freshman Ian Jackson needs an offensive resurgence. The Heels need something, anything, from their bigs, need better 3-point shooting. But mainly, they need Davis leading the way.
Keep it simple
It’s a little late in the season to be talking about and stressing the simple fundamentals, but Hubert Davis is doing it, saying again Monday that the Heels have been “consistently inconsistent” when it comes to the small details that can add up either to a win — or a loss — if not handled properly.
“I’ve been clear and direct in regards to the little things I’m talking about,” he said. “It’s shot selection. Turnovers the last two games, teams have scored 41 points off our turnovers. That’s just not going to work.That’s not sustainable.
“Defensively, it’s defending without fouling, boxing out. Those are things that can be fixed and things we have talked about that we have to fix moving forward.”
Another talking point: making the simple play.
“Simple works,” Davis said. “Routinely make routine plays. I think our turnovers are the result of not making the easy play, trying to hit the home run.”
Better defense a must
The Tar Heels sprinkled in some zone looks against the Blue Devils and may have to do the same in the final nine games before the ACC tournament. Switching defenses in games is rarely a bad thing in basketball, especially for a team lacking, say, 7-footers patrolling around the rim.
Hubert Davis, on his weekly radio show, said the Heels might use more zone, that he liked the way it slowed down Duke’s ball movement in a stretch of the second half.
The Heels had no answer for Flagg, but who does? A top priority for now is slowing down Jaland Lowe and Pitt — Lowe had 18 points as the Panthers beat UNC, 73-65, last week.
The Heels are not a big team, which can make every small defensive mistake that much bigger. UNC has speed and quickness and that needs to translate into the Heels moving their feet better and making quicker — and correct — defensive decisions in positioning.
And consistency. What has befuddled Hubert Davis has been games like the one at N.C. State, which had the Pack shoot 22.5% from the field in the first half and 60% in the second.
“It goes back to consistency,” the coach said. “Obviously we have shown that on both ends of the floor we can play at a high, elite level but can we do that and stay there, can we have that consistency?”
Senior Night sendoff
The Heels’ Quad-1 opportunities are slim from here — Clemson and then Duke at the Smith Center on Senior Night at UNC.
In 2021-22, Hubert Davis’ first as head coach, the Heels were 12-6 before winning 11 of their last 13 games in the regular season. The last win: huge. It was at Duke, in Mike Krzyzewski’s last home game at Cameron, ruining the night for Coach K.
Krzyzewski was there Saturday at Cameron, sitting courtside, as the Blue Devils hammered the Heels. He might have gotten some pleasure out of it.
The win at Duke in 2022 did not carry UNC to an ACC tournament title, but the Heels’ continued to push and climb, reaching the NCAA Final Four and beating Duke again — Coach K’s final game — before the loss to Kansas in the championship game.
A year ago, N.C. State claimed an ACC championship by beating the Heels in Washington, D.C., then rolling through the NCAAs to the Final Four.
“We’ve been in similar situations like this in previous years and we’ve persevered,” UNC’s Seth Trimble said after losing at Duke. “I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve seen miracles happen at other schools in a similar position like us.
“I don’t think it’s too late, but if we don’t start taking steps forward as a team, and really just start honing in on what we need to do and diving into it a hundred percent, then it will be too late. But we have a chance to cap off the season with a nine-game winning streak. It’s on us.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 10:42 AM.
