Kaimon Rucker looking to achieve more in 2023 after UNC fell short of expectations last year

On the surface, you would think North Carolina and EDGE Kaimon Rucker would be happy with their 2022 season. The Tar Heels won the Coastal Division. They played in a well-regarded bowl game in the Holiday Bowl. They won nine games and reached a high ranking of No. 13 in the country.

But Rucker says it was not good enough.

The way the team finished down the stretch — four straight losses, including defeats to Clemson in the ACC Championship and North Carolina in the bowl game — left a bad taste in the players mouths.

“We most definitely feel like nine was not enough but I don’t feel like it’s necessarily the record,” Rucker said after North Carolina’s Spring Game. “It is the way that we finished. I feel like for us, the way that we finish wasn’t the way that our expectations were set because we had high expectations for last year and obviously we did not. We won the Coastal. We went six and one all until the later half of the season we lost (four) in a row. That wasn’t our standard. Greatness is our standard and we did not achieve that.”

Kaimon Rucker says poor finish has lit a fire in the Tar Heels

The rough slide at the end of the season started against a disappointing Georgia Tech team that entered the game at 4-6. But the Yellow Jackets upset the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill, N.C., to eliminate the slim hopes the team had of making a shock run over the final few weeks to the College Football Playoff.

NC State then came into Kenan Memorial Stadium the following week and defeated North Carolina in double overtime. The Tigers then blew them out 39-10 in the ACC Championship before the Ducks squeaked by in one of the best bowl games of the season, 28-27.

All in all, North Carolina went from 9-1 with a very outside shot of the playoff to 9-5 and missing out on the final top 25 ranking of the season.

“It’s not about how you start,” Kaimon Rucker said. “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.”