Hubert Davis stresses how crucial a challenging non-conference was for North Carolina

North Carolina finished its non-conference schedule 8-5 overall with four losses to ranked opponents such as Kansas, Auburn, Alabama and Florida.

The Tar Heels strength of schedule during the first two months of the season isn’t lost on head coach Hubert Davis. Still, North Carolina has won its last three games is off to a 4-1 start to ACC play, which Davis attributes to the tough 13-game stretch early in the season.

“Well, the schedule that we played in the non-conference has helped us,” Havis said after defeating NC State 63-61 on the road. “A lot of people don’t even include in the preseason, we went to Memphis and we played a true road game at Hawaii. I mean, how many games have we played?

“Seventeen games, 10 away from home, playing [at NC State] is a very difficult environment, but we’ve been there before, and we’ve been in that situation where we need a basket or we need a stop. So it’s great to be able to pull from experiences that you’ve had as a team and individually, to be able to execute, and that’s what we talked about in the huddle prior to the last possession defensively. We were in the same situation against UCLA, we just needed one stop.”

The Tar Heels improved to 3-2 in true road games after beating the Wolfpack, who are coming off a run to the Final Four during the 2023-24 season.

Ian Jackson scored 21 points during the vicitory while Jalen Washington scored the game-winning bucket on a dunk with less than a minute left in the game. Washington blocked Jayden Taylor‘s layup at the end of the regulation to put the finishing touches on the victory on both sides of the court.

North Carolina now has ACC wins over Georgia Tech, Notre Dame, SMU and NC State and is one of four one-loss teams in the conference.

One issue that the Tar Heels are facing, however, is that they lost four of the five ranked matchups during their non-conference schedule. In the second week of January, seven teams in the conference are considered Quad 1 competition and Duke is the only ranked team in AP Top 25 within the ACC.

Those losses in November and December may come back to bite the Tar Heels when Selection Sunday comes around. Until then, they can continue to build their resume by taking care of the opponents in front of them. Next up, they’ll host Cal on Wednesday, Jan. 15.