Hubert Davis isn’t hiding where his focus is as North Carolina resets following its latest game that resulted in a loss to SMU.
While the Tar Heels have spent plenty of time talking about execution on the offensive side of the basketball, Davis is zeroing in on something he believes can be fixed defensively in practice.
Speaking this week, Davis made it clear that he’s welcoming the opportunity to slow things down and address North Carolina’s defensive issues. UNC gave up 97 points in its lose to Southern Methodist.
“I’m excited about this week,” Davis said, per On3’s Cade Shoemaker. “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…”
The loss to SMU exposed some familiar problems on the defensive end, weather breakdowns in communication, missed assignments, and moments where North Carolina simply didn’t play with level of defense it needed to.
“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.”
Regarding how he plans to do that, Davis stated that UNC will run drills that it did a few months ago during preseason. As long as UNC can figure it out, there’s reason to believe it can be a good team in the ACC.
“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.”
North Carolina’s offense isn’t the problem. When the ball moves and shots fall, the Tar Heels can score with anyone. The challenge has been getting stops and responding when things don’t go smoothly. Hopefully, he can fix that in practice.