UNC-Charlotte Postgame Interviews: Gio Lopez & Gavin Gibson

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Saturday night in Charlotte was about as opposite from Labor Day night as it could get for Bill Belichick and North Carolina. After playing on national television in front of more than 50,000 fans, the Tar Heels found themselves being streamed on ESPN+ in front of less than 20,000 in a sold-out Jerry Richardson Stadium. While the atmosphere was entirely different, so was the result on the field. Carolina shut out Charlotte in the second half en route to a 20-3 victory — the fewest points that UNC has allowed against an FBS opponent since 2001.

Redshirt-sophomore quarterback Gio Lopez and redshirt-senior defensive back Gavin Gibson spoke to the media following their first win of the season. Watch those complete interviews below and read some noteworthy excerpts… 

Gio Lopez

“Just for me, I don’t feel like it was maybe a comfort standpoint. I feel like it was more just getting out there and playing. I think we all played way better today than we did Monday, but overall, I just think it was good for us to get a win…

“Yeah, I just feel like our staff does a great job preparing for the game, preparing throughout the week for our openers. Overall, I just think both weeks just show that we have a good start to the game…

“So this week, it was good to have a short week almost. Usually you want to have a full week of recovery. But I think for us, it was a positive to have a short week and get that taste out of our mouth. We still didn’t play our best ball at all. We can play a lot better, but just overall, to get a win, it felt good.”

Gavin Gibson

“After we broke down the film and we just looked at the situational side of the football game, it was a whole bunch of situations where we just didn’t compete as good as we could. We’ve got to be better fundamentally, of course, and then just tackling, you know? That was really the emphasis throughout the whole week, was just locking in on the fundamentals. We’ve got to make tackles and just play our game — we don’t have to go above and beyond. We’ve just got to do what we do…

“For Bill, this is just a small step of the way, building on this season that we are doing. This is the first win for him, first win for us as a team. But we know that there’s still a lot of growing to do. We’ve still got a whole lot of building to do. So we’re not trying to get too high. We don’t want to get too low. So we’re just trying to keep tunnel vision and keep the path going…

“This is actually my third time playing in Charlotte. I was at Maryland for my first year, whenever we played here, and then ECU last year, so I was trying to tell the guys about the student section right behind us. Don’t think that just because we’re going to Charlotte, a small school, they’re not going to be right in our ear the same way that they would be. But honestly, I feel like not being too much worried about the crowd noise and like, honestly, whenever you’re on the field, you want to be as locked in as you can on what your assignment is, what your alignment is, and what your techniques got to be. So just trying to tell those guys and everybody on the sideline, like, tune that out. It doesn’t really matter. We came here to play ball, so we don’t need to get affected by any of that.”