CHARLOTTE — There was a quartet of four-second pauses from UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis inside the interview room at Spectrum Center late Tuesday night.
Following the Tar Heels’ gut-wrenching 90-84 loss to No. 7 Florida in the Jumpman Invitational, Davis didn’t have many new answers. That’s because UNC (6-5, 1-0 ACC), which is 0-4 against ranked opponents this season, has faced many of the same problems in each of its biggest games.
Double-digit deficit? Check. An inability to string together defensive stops? Check. Come up short down the stretch? Check.
“I don’t know,” Davis said after one of the extended pauses during his 10-minute press conference.
Davis “can’t explain” the “head-scratching” starts that continue to stymie the Tar Heels.
“To play with that type of energy and effort in the second half and not have that consistently in the first half or for an entire game … that’s been the consistent theme for us this year,” he said.
It’s something, Davis added, UNC is “just gonna have to figure out.”
The undefeated Gators (11-0) sprinted to a 17-point lead in the first half and UNC rallied in the second half to take a four-point lead with just over four minutes to go. From there, Florida had an 8-2 rebounding advantage, including four offensive rebounds, and made each of its eight free-throw attempts.
The Tar Heels were outscored 13-3 in that stretch, including an 8-0 run to finish it, and didn’t score in the final 2:13.
RJ Davis, Seth Trimble, Elliot Cadeau, Ian Jackson reiterate Hubert Davis’ thoughts
UNC guards RJ Davis, Seth Trimble, Elliot Cadeau and Ian Jackson said many of the same things they’ve said all season, reiterating the same problems as their head coach.
“We’re right there at the end of the day. … Those timely little mistakes that we keep having, we can’t have them,” said RJ Davis, who finished with a game-high 29 points, along with 8 rebounds and 4 steals against the Gators.
“We gotta get rid of the slow starts,” said Jackson, who scored all 11 of his points in the second half.
Cadeau and Trimble reflected on the “flashes” UNC has shown at times this season and the need for consistency.
“I feel like we’ve shown flashes of how good we can be,” said Cadeau, who had 11 points and seven assists. “We just need to work on staying there for a whole game, for 40 minutes.”
UNC, Trimble noted, is “too far in the season just to continue to show flashes of how good we can be.”
“We’ve shown it, so that belief is still there,” said Trimble, who had 11 points, 7 rebounds and 3 steals. “. … It’s time to do it. No more flashes. No more flashes, it’s time to do it.”
UNC has five losses before Christmas for the first time since the infamous 2001-02 season, a year that ended with the Tar Heels winning only eight games.
“You have a choice, but you really don’t have a choice. You can stay down, you can point fingers, you can whine and complain, you can make excuses or you can get your tail back up and step forward and start swinging again,” Hubert Davis said.
“There’s just no choice in that. You’re gonna get knocked down in life. Not everything’s gonna go your way, so the only thing you really have control over is how you react and how you respond. My communication with them is: how we react and how we respond from this in our preparation for our next game is gonna be huge.”
Huge is right. The next opportunity is No. 18 UCLA on Saturday (3 p.m., CBS) in the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
The Tar Heels have tracked down the same path through 11 games. At some point, they’ll either chart a new course or continue down a road that could lead to missing the 2025 NCAA Tournament. If the same problems continue to plague the Tar Heels, the same script will likely continue to play out.
Rodd Baxley covers Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his ACC coverage on X/Twitter or Bluesky: @RoddBaxley. Got questions regarding those teams? Send them to rbaxley@fayobserver.com.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: UNC basketball can’t shake same problems in loss to Florida
