CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina Coach Roy Williams met with the media via zoom Monday afternoon to discuss his team as it enters ACC play, beginning with Tuesday night’s game at NC State.

Above is Williams’ full presser conference and below are some notes and pulled quotes from what he had to say:

*Williams is 37-4 all-time versus NC State, which includes a 5-0 mark when he was at Kansas and 32-4 at Carolina. UNC leads the all-time series 160-78. The Tar Heels are 67-46 against the Wolfpack in Raleigh.

*With Notre Dame-Syracuse postponed because of COVID testing, the NC State game has been moved from 9 pm to 7 pm and will still air on the ACC Network.

*So, the No. 17 Tar Heels at 5-2, the nonconference portion of their schedule is now complete here in the shortened season. So where does Williams’ team stand at this time?

“I think, first of all, there’s two major areas that we've barely been - you look at all the stats - we're not shooting the ball (43.4 percent) well and we're turning it over a lot (15.7 per game),” Williams said. “And so, offensively, we’ve got to do that, but I still think, if you're going to be a really, really good team, you’ve got to get better defensively. So basically, we’re looking at all phases.

“Last week, we really tried to work hard to stop turning it over. And I think that getting a better quality shot, particularly from the outside, and getting our younger players to understand what is a good shot and what's not a good shot. Best man in my wedding, my best friend in high school, he said, ‘You should shoot it if it feels like leather.’ And I think some of those shots made it seem like that.

“But those are our areas right there. And where we stand, I haven't seen hardly anybody in ACC play any games except for watching a game and a half of what NC State's played so far. But I think it's going to be a good league, but I haven't seen enough to even know what everybody else is doing.”

*In falling behind 19-8 versus Kentucky in the first half this past Saturday in Cleveland, it marked the fifth time UNC has trailed by at least 11 points in the first half, and this is in just seven games. Carolina came back each time to tie or take the lead, as it did in eventually defeating the Wildcats 75-63, but is Williams concerned about the starts?

“Probably not as much as it does give you guys something to write about, I guess,” Williams replied. “But we started the UNLV game down 13-0 and we won by 18, I think. So, I would like to start better, yeah, but I will look at the total game probably more so than how we start.

“And to be honest with you, I look at the last four minutes more than I look at anything because that's usually crunch time and that's when we’ve really got to play better there. Yeah, I don't like what we're doing during the start of the games and we're even trying to change our warmups and do things to get a little more activity out there to see if that'll help.”

*Kerwin Walton broke out Saturday in Cleveland, draining all three of his 3-point attempts, including consecutive baskets triggering a 12-1 run that gave the Tar Heels control of the game. Prior to the UK tilt, Walton had converted just 2 of 19 from beyond the arc, so did his performance warrant possibly justify more playing time?

“I'm not going to get too excited about what he did. I didn't get too excited,” Williams said. “I'm looking down here now, so he's 5-for-12, so if my math is right, that means he was 2-for-9 before that if I'm looking at the right column. And so, he makes some in practice, he has some stretches in practice, in our shooting drills, where he makes a lot of shots. I think that he's probably been averaging around 10, 11, 12 minutes each game.

“We do need some guys in the game that are going to make shots and I think that was extremely important to us. And I think Puff (Johnson) is a little bit of that, too. And so, there's going to be more opportunities for anyone the more successful you are. And I think, needless to say, his offensive performance against Kentucky was huge for us.

“Now, he's got to be able to do the things defensively and ball handling that he doesn't balance out his great shooting. But I'm very pleased with him as a young man and the work ethic that he has and hopefully he will get more minutes because that means his shots going in a lot more, so I like that.”

*Andrew Platek appears to be transferring his success shooting in practice to the games, as the senior guard is 8-for-19 on the young season, which is 42.1 percent. A year ago, Platek saw the first extending playing time of his career, but he converted on just 13 of 57 (22.8 percent) from beyond the arc. What has been the difference, is it confidence, a better stroke?

“All of it is part of it, but Andrew has a bad habit of going up and, when he goes up, he’s got such a severe upper-body lean to the back,” Williams said. “I can show you every shot he’s shot in the past and I would bet you 75 percent of his misses are going to hit the front rim. And so, that's the one thing I talked to him about last year, didn't get it fixed.

“I talked to him about it last spring, over the summer, tried to get that fixed. And he missed one right across from our bench in the game against Kentucky that I had that look, it looked like he'd gotten back. But then he made a big one right in front of our bench a little bit later. But he's definitely a kid that works on it extremely hard. He's put up a number of shots, he’s worked on that.

“And so I'd say the practice has been the most important thing. But, he did have a physical thing that he's needed to stop because it was just hampering his shooting percentage.”

*NC State has developed a reputation as an effective pressing team under Kevin Keatts, and this season is no different. The Wolfpack’s numbers bear that out: It’s turned over the ball just 56 times compared to the 1111 turnovers committed by its opponents through five games. That’s forcing 22.2 turnovers per game. UNC is averaging 15.7 turnovers a game, and it’s something that plagued the Tar Heels in the first half of a loss to Texas and in a loss at Iowa.

So, how much does State’s press concern Williams?

“I really always in the past have liked people to press us because it makes it a full court game,” Williams said. “Some people just press to slow you down and aren't really aggressive with it. But State really does try to take the ball away from you. And so, I've always liked to play in those kinds of games, but never with the two freshmen guards out there.

“It's a little more scary this time than it has been in the past. And I think that's Kevin's (Keatts) philosophy and what he tries to do and they do a nice job of it. We can't go over there and expect to be successful if we turn the ball over 25 times or something crazy like that. Only turning it over 11 times Saturday was much better than what we've been doing, but we'd like it even lower than that or keep it at that, but have more possessions. The percentage of our turnovers is what bothers me.”

*Jacob Turner contributed to this report.