CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Basketball Coach Hubert Davis met with the media Tuesday afternoon at the Smith Center in advance of the No. 7 Tar Heels’ game Wednesday night at NC State.
Davis discussed many aspects of his team, plus the challenges in facing the Wolfpack.
UNC is 11-3 overall and 3-0 in the ACC, while State is also 11-3 and 3-0. This is the first time in 50 years and third time ever the Tar Heels and Wolfpack are playing an ACC game when both teams are 3-0 or better in league play.
Above is video of Davis’ presser, and below are some notes from what he had to say:
*One of the recent topics about the Heels to surface began with Davis’ postgame presser at Clemson when he brought up how the players do most of the talking during timeouts, especially later in close games. Davis was asked a couple of questions about it, so he went more into detail.
“I would say 99 percent of the time, a part of practice is the last three minutes of a game. And I talked to you guys earlier about conversation I liked in the huddle, and that was the conversation. It was like, ‘hey, we did this in practice, this is exactly the drill that we did in practice, so let’s get a stop here.’
“We play this game stop, score, stop. And in the huddle and they were like, ‘let’s get a stop, score, stop,” or,’ let’s get a score, stop, score.’ So, they’re taking what we’ve been talking about in practice and trying to put it in a game.”
*The Tar Heels have shown they are comfortable playing grinder games, as that’s what the road wins last week at Pitt and Clemson were, but Davis still wants to play fast. In fact, he wants to play much faster when it’s there.
“I want to play faster, I do. I just want to go. Whether it’s a made or missed basket, the pace which we transition from defense to offense is I want it to be real. And I feel like we have the guys to be able to do it.”
*That said, the team showed his coach something last week, validating what he has told them that games always won’t flow the way they want, so they must adapt. The Heels didn’t score any fast break points against Clemson, yet still won by 10 points on the road.
“That’s one of the things that I was really proud of the guys because you’re not going to be able to get the pace that you want all the time. So, in those situations, you’re going to have to make adjustments and tweak and pivot and alter to be able to be successful.”
*Davis has plenty of respect for the Wolfpack, and spent time zeroing in on two players: D.J. Burns and DJ Horne.
Horne played two seasons at Illinois State before spending the last two years playing for Bobby Hurley at Arizona State. He averaged 15.1 points per game in 202-21 with the redbirds, and was at 12.5 in each of the last two seasons with the Sun Devils.
This season, however, Horne leads the Wolfpack averaging 14.4 points and is shooting 42.9 percent from 3-point range, making 39 of 91 attempts so far.
Burns, who is listed at 6-foot-9 and 275 pounds, is averaging 12.6 points, 4.7 rebounds, and is second on the team with 39 assists on the season.
“They have a number of them in the name of Burns and DJ Horne. They (State) can score consistently down in the paint, they can shoot from three, they’ve got athleticism that can attack the basket. And when you’ve got D.J. Burns who can score, but he’s not a good passer, he’s a gifted passer. He posed a lot of problems for us defensively.”
Regarding Horne: “He’s a gifted scorer. He can score the ball in his hands, he can come off screens. He’s shooting over 40 percent from three, very aggressive playmaker, very confident, has the green light, and the type of attention that needs to be on him is the same type of attention that you have on (Pitt’s Blake) Hinson and (Clemson’s Joe) Girard, and those type of guys.”
