UNC men’s basketball holds ‘players-only’ meeting after win against Navy
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- UNC players held a postgame players-only meeting to address late-game lapses.
- Turnovers and communication failures fueled Navy’s 15-0 run and reduced shot attempts.
- Players warned that similar lapses against Michigan State next week risk a blowout.
His team had just won. He’d recorded his third straight double-double. So why was it that Caleb Wilson appeared so downtrodden after pouring in 23 points in a 73-61 win over Navy?
“It’s a close game [and] I was pissed off,” the UNC freshman said Tuesday night. “That [expletive] shouldn’t happen.”
Turns out Wilson wasn’t the only Tar Heel who felt that way. It took over 20 minutes after the game’s end for the UNC players to begin trickling out from the locker room and into the lounge where postgame interviews are typically conducted at the Dean E. Smith Center.
The reason for their delay? A players-only meeting. Seth Trimble and Henri Veesaar took point, said Jarin Stevenson, in calling the gathering.
Veesaar saw it differently.
“We might have talked a little more than others, but I feel like everybody contributed,” the Arizona transfer said. “Everybody said what they had on their mind, the way they saw the game go, and how they seen us practice, and that’s about it.”
The Tar Heels led by 24 points with less than five minutes before Navy rattled off a 15-0 run to bring the difference to single digits. North Carolina had three turnovers during the Mids’ late-game surge, which caused UNC to return to its starting lineup with two minutes remaining.
Stevenson and Veesaar pointed to messed up assignments — like botched switches or late reads — and overall communication issues as the biggest issues on defense.
Their coach agreed.
“The communication out there on the floor has to get better,” Hubert Davis said. “The listening and being able to apply the communication has to be better... there were a number of times that we did not do that tonight.”
Veesaar, who was outspoken about what he saw as a poor defensive outing against Radford last week, grabbed a nearby stats sheet and scanned it as he spoke to media on Tuesday night.
Holding an opponent to 29% from the field is a “decent job,” Veesaar reckoned. Then he checked the box score and paused.
“I think they have more shots than us,” Veesaar said, pouring over the sheet to confirm. “Oh no. Yeah, they have more shots than us. So, like, that’s not good. We should definitely get more.”
UNC attempted 56 shots to Navy’s 69. The Tar Heels also recorded more 13 turnovers, compared to six for the Mids, Veesaar pointed out.
“We shouldn’t have more turnovers than them,” he said. “They played with more discipline. We were kind of loose with it.”
And that was part of the reason for the meeting. As Stevenson and Wilson emphasized, UNC’s issues were bigger than the 15-0 Navy run.
“It was really the whole game,” Stevenson said. “Like, even the first half, we didn’t play to our potential.”
“I really think the biggest lesson is coming out strong,” Wilson said. “I don’t feel like it’s no other lesson.”
Davis offered a slightly different opinion. The UNC coach pushed back on the notion that North Carolina started slow in the first half, instead pointing to Navy’s unpredictability as a disruptor.
The Mids, Davis explained, were “methodical in their approach” on Tuesday night. Navy toggled between different defensive looks — man, zone, matchup — and deployed full-court and three-quarter-court pressure at various points. Sometimes, they’d stay home on every off-ball action. Other times they switched everything.
“For this new group, new team, to be able to read and adapt through the changes, I felt like it took us until the second half to really get a rhythm,” Davis said. “We got stops, we got out in transition. I mean, once we get stops and we’re able to get out in transition, that’s when we’re at our best.”
Regardless of the framing — a sluggish start, a stunning 15-0 swing, or maybe, something in between — the message coming out of the locker room was unmistakable: play like that against Michigan State next week and...
“We’re going to get, like, blown out or lose,” Stevenson said.
“It won’t be fortunate,” added Wilson.
For a team still finding its rhythm — a process that’s already difficult with 11 new players, and increasingly so with the Trimble’s injury — the meeting is a step in the right direction, said Veesaar.
“We don’t really know exactly what a team culture was before,” Veesaar said. “So everybody came from teams where they had a voice or were able to speak. Here, the coaches try to let everybody speak. They hear everybody out... and so do the players.”
So while the scoreboard said UNC won by 12, the players-only meeting suggested they expect much more.
And in a locker room where every voice carries, so does the standard.
“I mean, we’re North Carolina,” Wilson said. “Navy played as hard as they could, but that should never be a close game.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
