Brooks & Black Talk Duke

CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina senior forward Garrison Brooks and junior wing Leaky Black met with the media via zoom on Friday to discuss Saturday’s game at Duke.

The Tar Heels and Blue Devils will play for the first time since Feb. 27, 1960, with neither team ranked and there won’t be any fans or media at the game. Only the teams and game essential personnel as well as the ESPN broadcast crew will be in the building, otherwise Cameron Indoor Stadium will be empty.

UNC is 11-6 overall and 6-4 in the ACC while Duke is 7-6 and 5-4. The game tips at 6 pm.

Here are videos of Brooks’ and Blacks’ interviews along with some notes and pulled quotes from what they had to say:

*The Tar Heels are coming off perhaps their worst performance of the season in a 63-50 loss at Clemson on Tuesday night. The Heels were off and didn’t practice Wednesday, but how has the energy been practice been since and what is the general attitude of the team since that loss?

“I think we practiced really well,” Brooks replied. “I think that’s something you have to do. You have to see yourself practice well and do it right in practice first before you can do it right on Saturday.

“We’re going to have a great practice today. We’re going to take everything we do today and do it Saturday and it’s going to be good for us.”

*As a senior, what are the challenges for Brooks leading a young team that has hit quite a few speed bumps during the season?

“It’s a season of up and downs for us,” Brooks said. “Just trying to keep (us up), keep us working hard and just keep us on the right track and getting better every day, and I think that’s something I try to do.”

*Garrison Brooks may be from Alabama, but he was well aware of the Carolina-Duke rivalry before becoming a Tar Heel. He was asked what his favorite memory of the rivalry was before he got to UNC and since he arrived.

“Danny Green’s dunk (at Duke in 2008), I think that’s one of the bigger moments,” Brooks said. “That’s something I remember as a little kid, seeing that. For a moment that I was in myself, when we met President Obama my sophomore year, that was great, man.

“A surreal moment, and pretty much what you would expect when you see everybody there and you know everybody’s watching. He came in our locker room and it was knew everybody’s eyes were locked in for that game.”

*Duke freshman guard D.J. Steward said Thursday he thinks the Tar Heels are going to try to “punk” them early in the game. Brooks was asked about that and if in this game more than others the teams try to feel each other out early while also trying to establish something.

“We’re pretty much going to do the same thing every time,” Brooks said. “We’re going to come in, try to get the ball inside, dominate the boards, that’s pretty much it. I’m not going to say we’re going to try to punk them, but we’re just going to be ourselves.”

*Duke forward Matthew Hurt is one of the ACC’s best players and perhaps its most difficult to defend. He’s 6-foot-10 and is averaging 18.8 points per game shooting 53.2 percent from the field, including 42 percent from 3-point range. And he shoots out there a lot, attempting 69 so far, which is 5.3 per contest.

So, what are the challenges in dealing with a guy like Hurt who can score from anywhere on the floor and create his own shot without using much of the dribble?

“Really good player,” Brooks said. “Gonna step out on the floor and shoot the ball, put the ball on the ground from the five position, it’s a challenge.”

And the key in dealing with a player like Hurt?

“Eliminate his touches,” Brooks answered. “It’s tough for him to score without the ball, so we will try to limit his touches as much as we can.”

*Both UNC’s and Duke’s front courts are extremely young, with three of the Tar Heels’ and Blue Devils’ top five leading scorers true freshmen. So, in Black's eyes, what challenges do Duke’s young guards present?

“I just think their physicality right now,” Black said. “I don’t want to word this the wrong way, but basically I feel like, with the position they’re in right now, I just feel like they're hungry, kind of more desperate than we are right now. It shouldn't be that way, but I feel like, with their record, that’s just how it is.”

*As the Tar Heels’ best defensive player, Black knows a thing or two about defending against some of the top players in the ACC. And, while he said he likely won’t be matched up with Matthew Hurt, the Blue Devils’ biggest offensive threat, he has some advice on how to slow him down and believes his teammate will do a good job of covering him.

“If a guy gets rolling, the easiest way to guard him is denying him the ball,” Black said. “I feel like anybody's easier to guard without the ball, so I feel like G (Garrison Brooks) will do a good job - I’m pretty sure G will guard him - I think he’ll do a good job on him.”

*It was a season to forget last year for the Tar Heels, both overall and against their crosstown rival. Duke swept UNC in 2020, with the Blue Devils winning in dramatic fashion in Chapel Hill thanks to a Wendell Moore put back as time expired before handling the Heels relatively easily in Durham nearly a month later.

With this in mind, is Black, who played in both games against the Blue Devils in 2020, using the disappointment of last season as motivation for Saturday’s game?

“One-hundred percent,” Black said. “Both games last year, especially that first one, is definitely heartbreaking. Who knows what would have happened, I feel like that would have helped us get over the hump, give us a little motivation going down the road.”

*As someone who grew up just under two hours from Chapel Hill in Concord, NC, Black knows what the rivalry means to people in the state better than most. Despite having played in four Duke-Carolina games so far in his career, Black said the experience of the rivalry is still surreal, especially because it’s a game he and his friends grew up watching.

“It still doesn’t feel real, the years have just gone by so quick,” Black said. “I definitely grew up watching this game. When I was younger, I barely even watched basketball, but I always watched the Duke and Carolina games. Me and my buddies back home, we always just talked junk about who we thought would win.

“And, now for me to be playing in it, they text me and they still call me all the time like, ’It was crazy to see you on TV playing against them.’ It's a weird feeling, but I feel like we’ll be ready to go.”

*During his senior year of high school, Black was teammates with Moore at Cox Mill High School, with the pair winning a 3-A state championship together in 2018. Being from the same area but now playing for rival schools, trash talking is guaranteed when Black is back in Concord.

“Being from the same city, the city's divided right now with who’s side they're on,” Black said. “Wendell, he doesn’t really do too much talking, but I feel like his little fan base back home does it for him though. I talk to him every now and then and Wendell’s a quiet guy, but like his fan base is ridiculous. So, there’s definitely some trash talk.”

*Can Black explain the magnitude of the rivalry to his freshmen teammates or is it just something they have to experience firsthand?

“I feel like this is something you have to experience,” Black said. “There's nothing like it. The adrenaline, no one gets tired, everything just goes out the window. There's no getting tired in a game like that. You've got to suck everything up and I feel like, with them, they've been around basketball their whole life, I feel like they know what's at stake here.”