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CHAPEL HILL – The Tar Heels have been down this road before.
As December arrived, North Carolina was coming off a terrible weekend at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut where they lost to Purdue and Tennessee, the latter serving as an ugly blowout.
Carolina's fire within ignited a positive response: Routs of Michigan at home and Georgia Tech on the road.
But it flickered again in a lopsided loss to Kentucky in Las Vegas. And again, and Hubert Davis was forced to preach his three most uttered words of the season, or at least seemingly so, “energy, effort, and toughness.”
Big road rout of Boston College, sluggish loss at Notre Dame, and then perhaps Carolina’s most impressive performance of the season followed, as they pulled away from Virginia last Saturday.
So, the question begs: With a week between games, and struggling Georgia Tech visiting the Smith Center on Saturday, how does Davis extract all the goodness his team revealed in wins over Michigan and Virginia, looking to eventually turn that into a habit?
“In the locker room after the (Virginia) game, I said, ‘One of the things that you should be really encouraged by and motivated, is that you guys have experienced the benefit of playing with energy, effort, and toughness,’” Davis said.
“So that should be an encouragement, and also a motivation to continue to have that feeling. It all starts with preparation in practice.”
The Heels admittedly took Notre Dame lightly last week, and perhaps that lesson was learned. The Yellow Jackets' visit this weekend will test if that's so or not.
But more than that, Davis wants his team to veer away from determining its emotional levels based on who it’s playing. At some point, the Tar Heels need to only worry about the Tar Heels, and their readiness will solely be determined by their own mindsets.
“No drop off,” sophomore guard Caleb Love said following the UVA game when asked about maintaining that edge for the Jackets a week later.
“Like I said after the Notre Dame game, we haven’t done anything yet. So, this game is a big win for us, and I’m proud of my team, I’m proud of the coaches putting us in position, but there’s no let-up at all. We’re on to the next.”
True, the Tar Heels have not achieved much yet. They sit at 11-4 overall and 3-1 in the ACC, but they once again got no votes in either major poll this week. They are really just a solid basketball team working to be something more than that. They are like a lot of clubs around the nation.
The win over UVA ended a seven-game skid against Tony Bennett’s program and should infuse the Heels with some seriously positive vibes. But this isn’t exactly a vintage Virginia team, so as well as Carolina played, it was just one game and one performance. Nothing more and nothing less.
The players understand this, in part because of the lessons learned through 15 games so far, including as recently as last week.
“It’s encouraging,” junior forward Armando Bacot said. “But me personally, and I know the coaches, too, are not satisfied with it because it’s something we’ve got to keep doing every game. We can’t just do it one game and then just have a lapse the next game. We can’t just keep showing flashes.
“It’s getting later on into the season now; we’ve got to all out it together. This is great, but I want to see us doing it three, four, or five times in a row.”
For now, they’ll take two in a row, with the next step Saturday versus Georgia Tech.
