It wasn't exactly the best showing for UNC against USC Upstate, winning 80-62.
I get it, an 18-point win should probably never be viewed as a bad thing, but it was a relatively close contest prior to about the final minute of the contest.
To me, it again brought up the question on when UNC will be the team that many know it can be.
For Caleb Wilson, who was awesome again with 20 points and 11 rebounds, it's evident that something needs to change ahead of ACC play.
“We just got to approach it stronger and better, have more energy and enthusiasm no matter who we play,” Wilson said, per The News & Observer. “We just got to pick it up. ACC play starts in a couple weeks.”
ACC play doesn't start until Dec. 30, as UNC will have three games prior to its first conference game of the year.
Still, the process is often more important than the final results when it comes to out of conference buy games. There wasn't a person in the world who thought USC Upstate would beat Duke on Saturday. We all knew what the final result was going to be.
What we didn't know was that UNC would be beat on the boards and look like it had more questions to answer than it did a few weeks ago.
“They were playing harder to get those offensive rebounds than us,” Davis said, “and I felt like we were leaking out in transition. And so that’s something that we’ll talk about at practice tomorrow.”
"I just didn't feel like the practices leading up to the game were at the level of attention to detail that is required to put yourself in a position to be successful," Davis said.
We'll see how players respond to this. Hubert Davis hasn't been too happy at times this year, but the Tar Heels still sit at 9-1 with a few impressive wins.
"We let the game linger on for way too long than we should have," center Henri Veesaar said after the win over USC-Upstate. "We should have put the game to bed with like 10 minutes left to go.".