Hubert Davis discusses UNC's defensive struggles in loss to NC State

North Carolina claimed the regular season ACC championship outright with a win over rival Duke to conclude the regular season, but they were not able to secure the ACC Tournament title in the postseason. Falling to NC State in an 84-76 loss in the ACC Tournament Final on Saturday night.

Things weren’t clicking particularly on the defensive end of the floor for the Tar Heels against the Wolfpack, and after the game, head coach Hubert Davis diagnosed what went wrong defensively with the NCAA Tournament now ahead.

“We just couldn’t guard them tonight,” Davis admitted. “I mean they shot 54%, 55% from the field, that’s just not gonna 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 I always mention is defense.”

NC State was red hot in Washington D.C. on Saturday, also making 42.9% of their shots from behind the arc to secure their first ACC Tournament championship since 1987. Posting 84 points on a Tar Heels’ defense that gave up just 70.2 points per game this year and held the Wolfpack to 70 or less points in their two regular season matchups (both UNC wins).

“For us and statistically throughout the ACC we’ve been number one in terms of all the metrics defensively. Allowing a team, any team, to shoot 55% for a game, that’s just not gonna work,” Davis said.

“And so 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’s 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.”

The Tar Heels were able to win the turnover, rebounding, and assist battles, but were not able to stop NC State’s best players on Sunday, especially the ones named DJ. With guard DJ Horne posting 29 points and big man D.J. Burns Jr. scoring 20 night points along with a season-high seven assists, effectively playmaking off of double-teams all night long when he wasn’t scoring.

Regardless, North Carolina still earned themselves a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament for the West Region, as they’ll look to bounce back and avoid an upset against No. 16 seed Wagner. Who’s won their last four games but averaged just 62.7 points per game during that stretch.

North Carolina and Wagner will square off on Thursday in their first-round matchup at 2:45 p.m. ET in a game airing on CBS.