North Carolina has a needed break from its schedule this week, as the struggling Tar Heels don’t have a mid-week game and play next Saturday when Pittsburgh visits the Smith Center.
The Tar Heels are coming off an 87-70 loss at Duke in a game that was a 32-point margin with 9:04 remaining before the Blue Devils appeared to have pulled back to close out the game. UNC allowed a 33-7 run in the first half leading to a 40-13 deficit and trailed by 22 points at halftime.
It was Carolina’s second consecutive defeat and fourth in its last five games with the lone win in that stretch at home in overtime against Boston College, which is currently 10-11 on the campaign.
So, yes, the Tar Heels need this time off.
“Yeah, I think it’s coming at the perfect time,” UNC Coach Hubert Davis said Monday morning during the weekly ACC Coaches’ call. “It’s a time to give us to regroup, we get practice and work on us as opposed to preparing for a game midweek. Get some guys healthy in terms of some bumps and bruises.
“I think mentally, we needed a break. We’ll practice this week and will have a day off in the middle of the week. And I just think it comes at a perfect time for us to regroup as a team and refocus on the things that we need to do in order to get better and for the outcomes to be better, and I just really believe it came at a perfect time to get this week without a mid-week game.”
UNC sits at 13-10 overall and 6-5 in the ACC. It’s NCAA Tournament hopes diminished considerably last week. Currently, the Heels are No. 45 in the NET with a 1-9 record in Quad 1 games. As it currently stands, they have just two more Q1 games remaining: Next Monday at Clemson and the regular season finale versus Duke.
Both matchups will be monumental tasks for a UNC team that is much smaller, less rugged, and in the case of the Bue Devils, less talented. In truth, however, the other ACC games left will also offer this team problems and require improved play for Carolina to come away with victories.
Davis says the week will also be used to tweak and refine things. Inconsistency has been a trademark of the Tar Heels dating back to the opener against Elon and continues.
“This is what our team has been consistently inconsistent in the details on both ends of the floor,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been, and I’ve been clear and direct in regards to little things that I’m talking about. It’s shot selection, turnovers the last two games have scored 41 points off of our turnovers. That’s just not gonna work, that’s not sustainable.
“Defensively, defending without fouling, boxing out. Those are things that can be fixed and those are things that we’ve talked about and those are things that we have to fix moving forward.”
Nine games remain in the regular season with five at home (Pitt, NC State, Virginia, Miami, and Duke) and four on the road (Clemson, Syracuse, Florida State, and Virginia Tech). Then there is the ACC Tournament in Charlotte.
Even though the Heels don’t play until Saturday, with so much self-time available and a dire need for improvement, this might be the most important week left of the season.
