Armando Bacot discouraged by North Carolina's performance against Wake Forest

The North Carolina Tar Heels’ men’s basketball team currently sits at 15-9 overall, a far cry from where everybody expected when they pegged the team as the preseason No. 1 in the 2022-2023 college basketball preseason polls. North Carolina is currently unranked, and they were recently thrashed by the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, 92-85, in a game that wasn’t even really close at all for much of the contest. The Tar Heels trailed by 22 at the half, and now they currently face an uphill battle in their remaining seven games if they wish to make the NCAA Tournament. Following the loss to Wake, UNC big man Armando Bacot expressed his frustration with how his team has been playing lately.

“Yeah, I don’t know. That’s what I don’t get, because we had two good days of practice and….I thought….there’s no question I thought we were gonna come into this game and win. And we get out there and it’s just like, not communicating. All of us not communicating. It seemed like everybody was worried about themselves. And it’s just discouraging. I wanna win. That’s why I came back. I want to win and the coaches want to win,” Bacot said.

Armando Bacot is in desperation mode

After UNC’s latest 92-85 loss to Wake Forest, their third straight, Bacot expressed the ‘sense of desperation’ he feels at this point of the year. With what he expects from himself and his teammates, he doesn’t want to end things on a sour note as he feels the clock ticking toward the end of his career.

“For me, it’s just a sense of desperation. I want to win and I want to be able to experience those things, said Bacot. “I’m not sitting here saying I’m perfect either because I do mess up too. But I want to win and that’s all I care about. That’s all I want to do.”

“Losing sucks. I hate it,” Bacot added. “I get sleepless nights just thinking about it because it’s all I want to do.”

Bacot has been keeping things up from his dominant junior season. He’s averaging a career-high 17.5 points and grabbing 11.3 rebounds per game through 24 games. Even so, his team as a whole has fallen short to this point. After making it into the national championship in 2022, the Tar Heels sit at just 15-9 overall and ninth in the ACC at 7-6. That means, as of today, they’re a team that’s trending toward the bubble after entering the year with sky-high expectations.

On3’s Sam Gillenwater also contributed to this article.