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UNC-Cal: Bill Belichick Postgame Q&A

CadeShoemakerby: Cade Shoemaker10/18/25

BERKELEY, Calif. — North Carolina lost to California 21-18 on Friday night at Memorial Stadium, despite being on the doorstep of a go-ahead touchdown with 3:48 remaining in the game. Instead, receiver Nathan Leacock fumbled the ball away just shy of crossing the goal line, and the Golden Bears held on to extend the Tar Heels’ losing streak to three straight games.

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Back from injury, UNC quarterback Gio Lopez played the entire game. He threw for 167 yards and no touchdowns on 19-of-35 passing. Benjamin Hall and Davion Gause combined for 99 yards on 20 carries, with each running back scoring a touchdown. Kobe Paysour topped UNC’s receivers with six catches for 101 yards.

UNC’s defense limited Cal to 294 yards of total offense, but two lost fumbles — the first one occurring on the first play from scrimmage and setting up an early Cal touchdown — proved too much to overcome for the Tar Heels.

Watch and read what UNC coach Bill Belichick said after the loss below.

Opening Statement

Belichick: “Obviously, a real competitive game here. A couple of big mistakes hurt us, but a lot of things we could have done better in all three phases. So just came up a little bit short today, here, couple of inches, I guess, on the touchdown, on the fumble. But just keep working on things that obviously we need to do a better job of. Third-and-long on defense, third-down conversions on offense, ball security, things like that.”

What can you do to fix the third-down conversion issues?

Belichick: “Yeah, well, it was better in the second half. We converted more in the second half.”

What was the difference in not letting a bad play like the early fumble linger and playing better as the game went on as opposed to letting the game get out of hand early?

Belichick: “We always keep competing. Thought we competed hard.”

You talked about the progress you’ve made during the bye week. Did you see a result of that tonight?

Belichick: “Yeah. I mean, I thought we played with confidence. We competed hard, we showed toughness. Just have to do some things fundamentally better, obviously.”

What’s your reaction to Kobe Paysour’s performance tonight?

Belichick: “He’s a tough competitor. He’s been like that on special teams and on offense since we’ve had him.”

Do you feel like you found some new playmakers who stepped up tonight like Kobe Paysour, Benjamin Hall and Tyler Thompson?

Belichick: “We have confidence in everybody we put on the field. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t put them out there. So yeah, we have confidence in all those guys.”

How much do you take into account that this game came down to the wire after other Power Four games this season were non-competitive by the second half?

Belichick: “It is what it is.”

What were some of the things you guys did in the bye week to help prevent the number of points you’ve been giving up?

Belichick: “Again, there’s things we need to work on and do better. It’s some things we’re doing OK, but Virginia will present different challenges. We’ll have to see what those are, and deal with them. Each team’s a little bit different, but Cal hit us on several in-cuts on situations. Just gotta do a better job.”

Gio Lopez was back at quarterback tonight. How would you assess the way he played?

Belichick: “We’ll take a look at it on film. We definitely dropped some passes. I’m sure it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t for any of us, coaches or players. But again, I thought we played competitively. I mean, we had the ball on the one-inch line with a chance to take the lead in the fourth quarter. So I wouldn’t say it was, I mean, that’s what it was. And then we couldn’t get the ball back until it was only 13 seconds left.”

It seemed like Benjamin Hall found success tonight. What did you see from him and also the offensive line’s ability to create lanes for him to run well?

Belichick: “I thought the backs ran hard. The backs ran hard, and they ran with good ball security. You know, Cal blitzes a decent amount. They have some big linebackers. Thought the backs really did a good job stepping up and handling the blitz, too. So, that’s probably the biggest challenge we felt coming into the game was our linebackers picking up those blitzes. And I thought they were pretty competitive on that. So, yeah, running the ball is good. And when there’s holes, then those guys hopefully can make yards with the ball in their hands, extra yards beyond what’s blocked. And looked like we did that a few times. So I thought they played good as a group. (Jaylen McGill) gave us a couple of good runs on returns, on kickoff returns. So that was nice to see, too. I thought he, just first glance, looks like he ran the ball pretty well in those situations, too.”

News broke yesterday of Lombardi taking a preseason trip to Saudi Arabia … 

Belichick: “I’ll just talk about the game here. I’m just focused on the game. I’m not going to deal with any of those, you know, whatever else. … The university released a statement on that. So that should take care of it.”

Do you think tonight showed some tangible signs of improvement from this team?

Belichick: “As I’ve said, we’ve been improving every week, so I’m not going to back off that. I think that’s true. But you can’t turn the ball all over and win. It’s just too hard. And then we’ve got to eliminate some of those kinds of mistakes. We need to tackle better, play better on third down, both sides of the ball. So still, things we need to do that it might have been enough. We hadn’t turned the ball over, but we did, and we didn’t get any turnovers on defense. So until that changes, it’s a little bit of an uphill struggle.”