Kaimon Rucker shares low point of 2022 season, motivation entering 2023

North Carolina‘s collapase at the end of the 2022 season is still on the team’s mind as the calendar has flipped to 2023, including for linebacker Kaimon Rucker. When asked during a March 2023 media availability about the low moment of the 2022 season, Rucker highlighted the the team’s inability to close out games is something that has ate at him.

“I would say just us not being able to finish towards the end of the game,” Rucker said. “I feel like that’s the low point, especially during the Holiday Bowl against Oregon. That hit me in the heart a lot because it felt like it was just like time after time again, there was times where like you’d would be in the game but we just couldn’t finish as a defense.”

Those struggles have been turned into motivation as the Tar Heels have high expectations for their 2023 season.

As a senior and a leader on the North Carolina team, Rucker said he is going to hold himself and his Tar Heel teammates accountable to make sure those struggles do not repeat themselves this fall.

“I feel like right now that just gives me a lot of motivation as a player and just being amongst the leader of the defensive,” Rucker said. “We got to learn how to finish, gotta learn how to attack the ball in the air, we got to learn how pass rush, we got to learn how to stop the run, not just on first, but second, third down and fourth down if they get there, and things of that nature. It was just like one of those things where that’s just constant motivation. I have to hold myself accountable. I have to hold everybody else accountable.”

Despite their inconsistency at the end of games, Kaimon Rucker and North Carolina did finish the 2022 season with a 9-5 record. However, four of those losses came in their final four games of the season after they snuck into College Football Playoff contention as a deep darkhorse.

“It’s not about how you start,” Rucker said after the North Carolina spring game in April. “It’s about how you finish and we did not finish well. I feel like for us, that definitely set a fire underneath us and allowed us to be more physical. We got to take the thinking out of it. We got to let our players play. We got to put our best pass rushers in. We got to put our best people in, put our guys that’s gonna allow us to make the best production, get things done on the field and stuff like that. I feel like the definitely the nine wins definitely did cause us to look over and be like we this this is not enough. We had to continue. We have to improve from this.”