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CHAPEL HILL – If North Carolina’s players and its head coach weren’t going to discuss its NCAA Tournament resume last week, they surely weren’t going to following a perplexing 76-67 loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday night at the Smith Center.
And perhaps that’s the best approach for the Tar Heels right now, because all thoughts about playing in the big dance shouldn’t be squeezed out of their psyche for the time being. The only thing that should matter to them is the next task at hand.
Before going to Virginia Tech for a crucial ACC contest Saturday, the Heels’ rookie head coach must find a way to get his troops into the right mindset.
Hubert Davis has had a fair amount of experience this season talking his team from the ledge, and he’ll have to do so one more time. His approach previously has been to relax the team, remove stressful thoughts and hug them instead of running them until they vomit. Perhaps Davis will do that again after a game in which the Heels trailed a team ranked No. 179 in the NET by 21 points with nine minutes remaining.
Whatever tactic Davis uses, it must get Carolina ready for the Hokies.
"Got no choice here,” Davis said following the debacle Wednesday night. “There's just no choice… You can sit here and whine and complain and point fingers and make excuses and continue to be down on yourself, or you can show up the next day and get ready to compete and fight and get after it.
“And so that's my expectation. That's our job, and that's what this team and this program will do."
So far, the Tar Heels have done well responding to bad losses.
They reeled off five consecutive wins, including routs of Michigan and at Georgia Tech, after an ugly loss to Tennessee. They were impressive in a pair of wins after being humiliated by Kentucky on national TV by 29 points. Routs of Virginia and Georgia Tech at home followed a surprising defeat at Notre Dame.
And coming off a horrid week in which the Heels lost at Miami and Wake Forest by a combined 50 points, they won four straight before getting pounded at home by Duke. Two wins later, Pitt came to town and dismantled Davis’ team.
The difference here is the Tar Heels were drilled by a poor team, one that improved to 11-16 overall and 6-10 in the ACC. Getting up this time might be slower, Davis’s message might be a harder sell. The Heels weren’t running from what happened versus the Panthers, but they were also saying the right things.
“We were upset. We are upset and this is a terrible loss,” sophomore guard Caleb Love said. “But like I said we have to get ready for Saturday and not do what we did tonight.”
Perhaps having a short memory is required here, as senior wing Leaky Black hinted, but pulling that off will only carry any value if the Heels don’t entirely forget what took place in their eighth loss of the campaign.
“It's disappointing,” Black said. “There's really nothing we can do about it now. We have to really lock in for Saturday against Virginia Tech. It's a big-time game, and we really gotta get that one.”
Carolina has 18 wins and owns a 10-5 mark in the ACC. Its season isn’t over by any stretch. Five regular season games remain, and with the trip to Blacksburg and a game at Duke on the slate before the ACC Tournament in Brooklyn, opportunities remain for the Heels to bolster their NCAA resume.
But that will only happen if they rebound from this game and prevent anything like it from happening again. And it starts Saturday, Love says.
“There's no reason to hang our heads. This is a bad loss for sure, but we still have a game on Saturday and we got to go get the win."
