SYRACUSE, NY – RJ Davis has been around long enough dealing with the media he knows how to massage his words when they need it.

He isn’t prone to calling out anyone, often choosing to balance a critique with encouragement. He did that standing outside the locker room inside Littlejohn Coliseum last Monday night after North Carolina’s 20-point loss to Clemson.

It was almost as if Davis dipped his toe in the water only to pull it back. Exasperated and almost emotionally beaten down, he had to know at that point this season simply wasn’t working out.

But Davis also knew it wasn’t over. That reality and a cleansing of sorts of the Tar Heels basketball ugliness from the previous month aided them in an 88-82 victory over Syracuse on Saturday night at JMA Wireless Dome.

The downtrodden Heels were a spirited, bouncy bunch.

“Not wanting to lose,” UNC’s second all-time scoring leader said. “We had seven more games left and we have another opportunity to make one last push. I’m pretty sure everyone knows what’s at stake for this group.

“For me personally, it’s my last year so I want to go out with a bang. I want to make March Madness and overall have fun. And I think our spirits were good after the Clemson loss. Sometimes, you’ve got to get back up after getting beat down like that. Our response was phenomenal going into practice.”

The Tar Heels (15-11, 8-6 ACC) didn’t practice Tuesday but went at it the next three days. It got so intense that Jae’Lyn Withers had his eye badly scratched by Cade Tyson in practice Friday and almost didn’t play against the Orange.

Good thing for the Heels he did, as Withers netted 19 points, his high at Carolina.

It was the contact between Tyson and Withers, the messaging of head coach Hubert Davis, it was RJ saying a few things, a resurgence by Ian Jackson sparked by a valuable week of self-reflection and choosing to go right instead of left after the embarrassing loss to the Tigers.

“Our last few days of practice have been the most competitive it’s been all year,” RJ Davis said. “Both teams getting after it. And that’s what we needed.”

Maybe in football terms, it was like a coach going full contact for a couple of days during game-week preparation. But it was as much mental as it was physical. The season was closing in fast and the Heels were falling well off the NCAA Tournament bubble.

“I think maybe the whole second half of the year, when things weren’t going our way, we put ourselves in a tough position,” RJ Davis said. “We knew what was at stake but I feel like right now, we look at the calendar and we look at the rest of the games we have left to play.

“We put ourselves in this position but we can still finish out strong and make one last push…. Everyone’s buying in more. I think that’s what’s been missing the whole year.”

The rest of the season commences Wednesday night when NC State visits. Then it’s improving Virginia on Saturday before a quick turnaround at Florida State on Monday night. Three games in six days that will surely test everything Davis said might be fixed.

And if the group is locked arm-and-arm and united on all fronts, they have a chance to make things interesting over the next week.