For the first time since losing in the ACC Championship Game in March, the Tar Heels will take on Notre Dame.
Head coach Roy Williams said he expects his team to come out with more intensity when they travel to South Bend Saturday.
“Well you know we got our tails beat last game,” he said. “If you don’t step up right now there’s something wrong with you.”
Once again the Tar Heels look to break out of shooting slump that has plagued them for the past five games.
After shooting over 50 percent from the field in the majority of games before this stretch, the Tar Heels have shot under 40 percent in each of the past five games.
Point guard Marcus Paige is just 4-30 from three during this stretch.
Williams said he hasn’t seen anything like this slump since his first year at Kansas in 1988, when current Minnesota Timberwolves general manager Milt Newton had a rough shooting stretch.
“I just know at the end of the year at Oklahoma State, they had not lost a game at home,” Williams said. “we’re down two and we’ve got the basketball and I said ‘let’s take this Milt, knock this sucker in and get the crap out of town.’ We went for three to win the game, he made the three and we got the crap out of town. That’s the only time I can remember something like this.”
Even forward Isaiah Hicks, who leads the team in field goal percentage, is coming off a 2-8 game in which he scored 8 points.
“Everybody would like to make every shot they shoot, but it don’t work like that,” Hicks said. “Even me I missed a lot of layups and stuff. Sometimes it goes in, sometimes it don’t.”
Hicks said the Tar Heels need to be patient and the shots will start falling again.
“We were kind of thinking about it too much,” he said. “Trying to force us to make shots but it doesn’t work like that. It’s going to fall sometime.”
Tip off on Saturday is at 7 p.m. Make sure to tune into WCHL starting at 5:30 for all of your pregame coverage. Joey DeVito 97.9 FM WCHL.
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