Hubert Davies Blames His Players For Loss Against North Carolina.
North Carolina’s pursuit of its first ACC Tournament title in eight years was denied with an 84-76 loss to rival NC State on Saturday night at the Capital One Arena.
“From the tip, it was a miserable defensive performance. I was very frustrated early and hoped that they would turn it around. I never thought we did on defense.
We were never engaged defensively. DJ Horne got every shot and every look he wanted. DJ Burns is going to back anybody down. I don’t care how big you are.
We didn’t seem to have a plan on doubling him or not. We were disjointed on that end of the floor. We never never found any kind of rhythm. We gave them life early, and they had it the whole game.
There were a couple of chances we could have pushed the ball harder and tried to get to their legs.
You have to give them credit. I hate giving them credit for anything, but five games in five nights is impressive.
They played with desperation; we played like it was a game in November. You’d rather win the regular season, but you’re still there, so you might as well win it. It’s a shame. It’s hard to win the league and the conference tournament. You’ve got to tip your hat to State, as hard as that is to say.
“We didn’t shoot it great. We shot too many threes. We probably could have gone to Armando a little bit more and gone to the rim a little bit more.
We stood around a lot and watched RJ. We’re better when we’re in rhythm and the the ball is moving. Even at the end, when we got them to turn the ball over.
How many wide-open threes did we miss? It was a weird night. It never felt like it was going to be our night. We’ve had a great history against State, but this gives them something to brag about, which is frustrating.
I was just extremely disappointed defensively. We were lazy. We were just terrible on that end.”
Read and watch everything head coach Hubert Davis, plus players RJ Davis and Armando Bacot, had to say from the podium following the ACC title game loss …
Armando Bacot: “I mean, all season early on, I thought I did a good job, and I think just going into this game, I just allowed him to catch the ball where he really wanted to. When he gets it at that point, it’s really tough to guard him.”
Hubert Davis: “No. I mean, we just couldn’t guard them tonight. They shot, was it 54 percent, 55 percent from the field? That’s just not going to get it done.
In regards to us, we’ve talked about all year that it starts with defense and rebounding and taking care of the basketball, and the first thing that I always mention is defense.
For us and statistically throughout the ACC, we’ve been No. 1 in terms of all the metrics defensively. Allowing a team, any team to shoot 55 percent for a game, that’s just not going to work.
It’s a credit that we stayed in the game, but we just didn’t — from a defensive standpoint, we weren’t able to guard them one-on-one, whether it was on the post, isolations out on the wing. Didn’t play the type of defense that you have to have in order to win games like this.