Hubert Davis identifies what North Carolina must do to end recent struggles

North Carolina exploded out of the gate with nine straight wins to start ACC play. But as of late, the Tar Heels have run into some midweek road bumps now having lost three of five.

Tuesday has not been a kind day to Hubert Davis‘ program, as UNC has now lost on the last three Tuesdays and are now 1-4 on that day of the week vs. 18-2 on all others. Plus, the losses came against Georgia Tech on the road, Clemson at home, and at Syracuse — none of which are currently ranked in the AP Top 25. So, is Davis hitting the panic button after the rough run?

“No, I mean, I don’t look at it that way,” he shared after the loss vs. the Orange. I don’t look at Tuesdays, I don’t look at the 10-game winning streak. We lost tonight. I just think we didn’t play well enough to win. And we just got to get better.”

He added that defense was the real issue tonight — which was the strength of the team throughout January.

“As I said before they shot 63 percent from the field. There are not a very few teams in the country we can beat, especially on the road, allowing a team to shoot that from the field.”

Next, Coach Davis was asked if there’s a particular area of focus that has dropped off or needs to improve amid the recent losses.

“Well, I don’t know if it is that it hasn’t been there,” he explained. “Again, you also have to compliment the teams that we’ve been playing against. Let’s compliment Syracuse for being able to step up and make plays. I mean, Brown coming into the game had made four 3s throughout his entire year, he hit two 3s (tonight). That’s six points, that big.”

But, at the college level, you can often expect unheralded guys to step up in random games, or have a certain team just go off from 3 like Clemson and ‘Cuse did. However, Davis admits that his team needed to make plays to overcome those strong opponents performances, and they just haven’t done it lately.

“So, you know, at the end of the day, you just have to step up and make plays and we just didn’t make enough. And so we’ll go back and we’ll work hard and look at the tape and see if there’s things, and they are things that we need to get better at, to improve, to tighten up and move forward to the next game on Saturday.”

Saturday brings a winnable opportunity at home vs. Virginia Tech before UNC hits the road for yet another Tuesday test, perhaps their toughest, on the road against a surging Virginia.