Fourth-year UNC basketball head coach Hubert Davis was far from talkative in his press conference after his Tar Heels, who began the season garnering high expectations at No. 9 in the AP Top 25 Poll, fell to 12-8 overall and 5-3 in ACC play via their 67-66 road loss to the Wake Forest Demon Deacons (15-4, 7-1 ACC) on Tuesday night.

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The brevity of Davis’ responses was understandable, though. After all, the loss was his team’s second straight by a margin of only one point, the first time UNC has lost back-to-back games by that margin since doing so against South Carolina and Duke in 1968.

And had the Tar Heels instead managed to defeat Stanford and Wake Forest, they would now be on a six-game winning streak while squarely on track to bounce all the way back from the string of quality losses in their daunting non-conference slate and earn an NCAA Tournament at-large bid come March. As it is, the Demon Deacons are on that ride, enjoying their six-game winning streak.

Although Hubert Davis didn’t provide in-depth answers to what went wrong at Wake Forest, he disputed one observation that the UNC basketball offense was “stagnant” at times. No, the 54-year-old suggested the low-scoring stretches, notably the Tar Heels’ six scoreless minutes at a critical juncture after leading at halftime, was just a matter of the ball not going in the hoop.

“I disagree,” Davis said about the reporter’s proposed “stagnant” descriptor. “I don’t think the offense was stagnant. I think we had some open shots. And we had some good looks. Sometimes shots go in, and sometimes they don’t.”

More times than not, Tar Heel shots didn’t drop — in what was the program’s fourth straight loss in LJVM Coliseum. UNC, fueled by a combined 35 points from its only two players reaching double figures in starting guards RJ Davis and Elliot Cadeau, shot 40.0 percent from the field as a unit, 25.0 percent from three, and 60.0 percent at the line.

Evidently, it’s as simple as that.

Perhaps shots will just start going in again when the Tar Heels welcome the struggling Boston College Eagles (9-10, 1-7 ACC) to the Smith Center at 2:15 p.m. ET Saturday (The CW Network).

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