Open Week Provides UNC Time to Focus on Defensive Issues

With no midweek game on the schedule ahead of Saturday’s matchup with Wake Forest, North Carolina plans to treat the coming days as a bye week of sorts.

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On Monday night’s installment of the Hubert Davis Live radio show, the Tar Heels’ head coach outlined several defensive shortcomings the SMU offense exposed, and explained how the team is looking to address them with the benefit of extra practice time. Davis reiterated how defense will continue to be the “lifeline” for UNC’s success this season, and returning to its earlier production will be the immediate focus at practice.

“I’m excited about this week,” Davis said on the show. “I love playing games, but I like practices even more, and it gives us a week to practice and look at some things against SMU that we have to tweak…”

Prior to North Carolina’s trip to Dallas, the Tar Heels were leading the ACC in several major defensive categories. This included opponent field goal percentage (36%), 3-point percentage (28%) and points per game allowed (63.7). Yet, against the Mustangs, all three of those figures were flipped on their heads with SMU shooting 60.1 percent from the floor (36-for-60) and 51.9 percent from three (14-for-27), to total 97 points — 23 more than any other UNC opponent this season. 

When asked about what caused the stark difference in Saturday’s defensive struggle, Davis immediately pointed to North Carolina’s on-ball defensive issues. 

“I thought our presence on the ball wasn’t very good, and that sets the tone,” Davis said. “If you take care of the ball, everything else will take care of itself, whether it’s on the perimeter, post, transition, (or) ball screens.” 

The abundance of practice time has also afforded the Tar Heels a longer period to digest Saturday’s loss in the film room. Davis emphasized the importance of using the SMU game as a teaching tool, intending to ensure UNC’s defensive lapse is an outlier for the rest of the season. 

“I think the film is huge,” Davis said. “I think you could tell the kids you didn’t box out here, or we could have done this better, but they need to see it. And they saw it today.”

Whether Davis’ claims that he loves practice more than games is coach speak or not, the 55-year old head coach does convey authenticity about his excitement for this week’s practice schedule. 

With game planning for Wake Forest pushed to the back burner, Davis and his staff plan to return to the basics, using preseason drills to address North Carolina’s own issues instead of simply preparing for its next opponent.

“There’s times where you have to get back to drills that you’ve done earlier in the season just to put yourself in a position to be successful,” Davis said. “So we’ll get back to that. We did it today and tomorrow and the rest of the week, and make sure that everyone understands what we need to do on the defensive end. That’s our lifeline, being good defensively.”