Hubert Davis: UNC basketball, Tar Heels 'still have opportunity to turn this season around'

Hubert Davis: UNC basketball, Tar Heels ‘still have opportunity to turn this season around’

Posted by author February 3, 2025 Basketball

Spread the love

UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis isn’t using his first team’s magical run as a way of motivating his fourth group of Tar Heels.

As Davis pointed out Monday on the ACC’s weekly coaches teleconference, fifth-year guard RJ Davis is the only UNC player remaining who experienced the Tar Heels’ sprint to the national championship game of the 2022 NCAA Tournament.

But as the current Tar Heels (13-10, 6-5 ACC) try to find their way in a season that is tracking toward missing March Madness, UNC’s fourth-year coach continues to communicate optimism to his team.

“Irregardless of where we are now and people’s opinions, this team still has a chance to achieve and experience everything that this team wants to achieve and experience,” Hubert Davis said Monday morning.

“We have nine regular-season games left, we have the ACC Tournament. It’s all under our control, in terms of us playing the best that we can be. … We still have an opportunity to turn this season around. We need to focus on becoming the best team that we can possibly become and, at the end of the day, live with the results.”

The results, so far, have been underwhelming for UNC, which started the season as a top-10 team before falling out of the polls and onto the NCAA Tournament bubble.

Included in half (46) of the 91 bracket projections on Bracket Matrix, the Tar Heels are running out of opportunities to improve their resume. Currently 45th in the NET, UNC has a 1-9 record in Quadrant-1 games. When they missed the 2023 NCAA Tournament, the Heels finished 46th in the NET with a 1-9 record in Q1 opportunities.

UNC has a full week to prepare for Pitt on Saturday (4 p.m., ESPN), but the Tar Heels only have two Q1 chances across their final nine games: at Clemson (Feb. 10) and the regular-season finale against Duke on March 8.

“I think mentally, we needed a break. We’ll practice this week and then we’ll have a day off in the middle of the week,” said Davis, whose team has lost four of its last five games.

“I just think it just comes at a perfect time for us to regroup as a team and refocus on the things that we need to do in order to get better for the outcomes to be better.”

What Hubert Davis says UNC basketball has to fix ‘right now’

The Tar Heels’ flaws were on full display in their 17-point loss against the Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor Stadium. If UNC wants any shot of turning things around, it starts with controlling the controllables.

“We’ve been consistently inconsistent in the details on both ends of the floor. That’s what we’ve been. I’ve been clear and direct in regards to the little things that I’m talking about,” Davis said.

“It’s shot selection, turnovers – the last two games, teams have scored 41 points off our turnovers. That’s just not gonna work, that’s just not sustainable. Defensively, defending without fouling, boxing out, those are things that can be fixed and those are things that we’ve talked about. Those are things that we have to fix moving forward.”

At the top of the list is UNC’s need for improvement in “making the easy play.” As Davis noted, the Tar Heels’ last two opponents have scored 41 points off 28 turnovers.

“I think our turnovers are a result of not making the easy play. … We’ve got to make simple, sound, fundamental plays,” Davis said. “When we don’t, that is a result of our turnovers. Those are things that we have to address and have to get better at right now.”

Rodd Baxley covers Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the TODAY Network. Follow his ACC coverage on X/Twitter or Bluesky: @RoddBaxley. Got questions regarding those teams? Send them to rbaxley@fayobserver.com.