Cormac Ryan talks 'supreme confidence' in shooting for North Carolina

Cormac Ryan will never shy away from shooting the three and is blessed to have great North Carolina teammates to keep his confidence at an all-time high.

Shooting 34.3% from three-point range, Ryan averages 11.5 points per game. Despite success, he knows there will be games where he’ll struggle.

But it’s all about the bounce back for Ryan.

“Part of the job and the responsibility of a shooter is you have to have extreme confidence in yourself,” Ryan said on ACC Radio on Sirius XM. “It’s something that takes practice. It’s something that I’m still working on and that if you’d ask any great shooter, they tell you that it’s something that you always have to consistently work on, the same way you work on your reps and putting your work in. 

“You just have to practice your ability to bounce back and to have games where you shoot one for nine from three and have the same confidence that you’re gonna go in and shoot six of eight the next game. And that’s something that I, you know, take a lot of pride in.” 

At 25-6, UNC is the top seed in the ACC Basketball Tournament. With that, there is pressure for all those involved.

“I’m proud of my ability to stay level-headed to kind of be able to continue to believe in myself but I will say like, it’s a lot easier to do that when you have a team full of guys who have your back, who believe in you, have a coaching staff who believes in you,” Ryan said. 

“And so that’s part of the beauty of being a part of this team here at Carolina is like I know that my guys have my back and they’ve got all the faith in the world in me and that makes my job a lot easier to continue to play aggressively and make big time plays down the stretch, you know, for this team to help us get wins.”

Ryan went for a career-high of 31 points against Duke last weekend. He was on fire for the game as he made 8-12 (66.7%) from the field, including 6-8 (75%) from three, and nine of his 10 attempts at the free-throw line.

While several other Tar Heels contributed in the margins, it was that outburst from Ryan that won the day in the latest edition of college basketball’s top rivalry.

It represents almost everything for those two programs to beat one another each season. However, since the victory clinched the outright regular-season title in the ACC for North Carolina, Ryan knows how much more this season finale meant for them all in Chapel Hill.

“We knew what it meant. We knew what was at stake,” Ryan said. “To walk out of this building with a W is always nice.”