THI TV: Bacot, Davis & Ingram Pre-ACC Tournament Interviews & Report

WASHINGTON, DC – Three North Carolina Tar Heels met with the media Wednesday afternoon at the Marriott Metro Center to discuss the team, awards, personalities, and preparing for the ACC Tournament.

UNC is the top seed this week and will open play Thursday at Capital One Arena against the winner of Wednesday’s game between Virginia Tech and Florida State. The Heels are 25-6 overall and finished 17-3 in the ACC, two games ahead of second-place Duke. UNC’s game Thursday tips off at noon.

Tar Heels RJ Davis, Armando Bacot, and Harrison Ingram fielded questions for about 10-12 minutes each.

Earlier this week, RJ Davis was named the ACC Player of the Year while also earning first-team All-ACC and multiple first-team All-America honors.

Bacot was named second-team All-ACC and to the ACC’s All-Defensive Team. Bacot was a first-team All-ACC member the previous two seasons.

Ingram was named Third-Team All-ACC in his first season in the program after spending the previous to years at Stanford.

Below are videos of their Q&A sessions along with some tidbits from what they had to say:

*Davis is the 15th Tar Heel to win ACC Player-of-the-Year honors, the first since Justin Jackson in 2016-17. It is the 16th time a Tar Heel has won the award (Larry Miller won twice), and Davis is the fifth guard to win the award with Phil Ford, Michael Jordan, Joseph Forte and Ty Lawson.

*Davis said winning the ACC Player of the Year was one of the goals he wrote down before the season. Asked what the other goals were, he replied, ‘I’ll just give y’all (media) one; the one that’s next, the ACC Tournament. Win that. And I’ll reveal the rest later.”

*Former Tar Heel and current Arizona Wildcat Caleb Love was named the Pac-12 Player of the Year as well this season. Davis asked about his former teammate doing something he also achieved.

“I congratulated him and he congratulated me. There’s always love between me and him. And for both of us to win conference player of the year I think is all God’s work right there. Always been a fan of his game. That’s my brother.”

*Davis talked a lot about winning the ACC POY, his father’s influence on his game and to never back down from anything, winning the tournament this week, and much more.

*In part due to Bacot’s outstanding season on the defensive end, Carolina had held teams to 40.4 percent from the floor, including 31.3 percent on 3-pointers, and 70.1 points per game (68.2 ppg in ACC play).

*Bacot has had a close-up view watching RJ Davis’ game grow since he arrived at UNC. So to see him win the ACC Player of the Year award is special for the grad student, and good buddy.

“We all were super excited. We were really surprised, honestly, that it wasn’t unanimous. Even I had a vote, and I was like that’s pretty crazy. I thought it would be a unanimous decision.

“We all were excited for RJ because just how far he’s come since he’s been here from freshman year to now to get to that point is huge.”

*Former teammate and current Arizona guard Caleb Love won the Pac-12 Player of the Year award, which thrilled Bacot as well.

“I talked to him, I was super pumped for him, too. Just to see both of them go their separate ways and it worked out for both of them is great.”

*Bacot’s head coach also received a major honor this week, as Hubert Davis was named ACC Coach of the Year. UNC’s all-time leading rebounder said it is well-deserved.

“Initially, we didn’t know because nobody said anything. When they were telling us the awards, we didn’t know. But then coach (Jeff) Lebo kind of stopped everything and told us he won coach of the year. It makes sense.

“Just the jump we made from last year to this year was huge, and he was the biggest part of it.”

*Ingram, the Pac 12 Freshman of the Year while at Stanford, earned third-team All-ACC honors in his first season as a Tar Heel. The Dallas, Texas, native led the ACC in rebounding in conference games (10.9 per game).

*He leads UNC in steals (46), is second on the team in rebounding (9.3 in all games) and offensive boards (2.7) and is third in scoring (12.5), three-pointers (52) and assists (67). He has nine of his 11 double-doubles in conference play, grabbed 15 or more rebounds four times, including 19 at NC State (most ever by a Tar Heel vs. the Wolfpack) and has the highest rebounding average for a player his size (6-7) since Miller in 1967. Ingram has scored 20 or more points five times: Villanova (neutral site), Tennessee, UConn (neutral site), Duke and NC State.

*Ingram had a blast celebrating the win over Duke last Saturday night. He didn’t get a chance to have a great time with teammates and fans after the first win over Duke in February because he was getting treatment, but he didn’t have to this time.

He didn’t, however, join Cormac Ryan on top of the team bus on Franklin Street.

“I saw him (Ryan) do it, James (Okonkwo), we were all trying to get up there.

“The fans were pushing the bus back and forth, and we saw it go up and down. And James was like, ‘get up there.’ And Cormac was like, ‘I’ll do it.’ And Cormac jumps up and does it, then James follows him, Zayden (High) follows him, and I was trying to go up there, but then Eric Hoots, who’s our director of basketball operations, he grabbed me and was like, ‘no,no, no, no, no.’”

*Ingram says he doesn’t pay much attention to honors or awards, but being recognized on the All-ACC third team is something he’s grateful for.

“It was cool. It was a blessing to be All-ACC. And for me, I don’t really care about all those awards, I was more happy my teammates got Coach of the Year, ACC Player of the Year, all-defensive team, ACC second team. It’s all a blessing to see that, and I think it shows how much our team has bought in.”

*In October, Ingram said he had an immediate wow moment as a UNC basketball player last summer when the day he arrived, employees at a local Chick-fil-A asked for selfies with him. Five months later, the selfies happen with more frequency. What is the weirdest selfie request or thing someone has said to him?

“The most wild, weirdest moment I’ve had is I was walking to class, and someone walked up to me, and they were like, ‘I love you, I really love your smile, will you smile for me?’ I was like, ‘What?’ They were, ‘will you smile for me,” and they got their phone out, and I thought they were going to take a selfie and they tried to take a picture of me smiling. I was like, ‘nah, I’m good, we can take a picture (together) though.”