UNC football general manager Michael Lombardi joined 97.9 The Hill’s Aaron Keck this morning for “The Monday Morning Huddle,” presented by Chapel Hill Tire.
The Tar Heels suffered a gut-wrenching loss at Cal Friday night, as a late fumble on the goal line nullified what would have been a go-ahead touchdown for UNC in the final minutes. The 21-18 defeat dropped Carolina to 2-4 overall on the season and 0-2 in ACC play. Up next is another difficult test, as No. 16 Virginia visits Kenan Stadium Saturday.
Here are a few of Lombardi’s answers on various topics:
On the loss at Cal: I think our team was committed to the game. It started out not the way we wanted with a fumble and giving up a touchdown early in the game, but I thought we had resolve and fight in our team and our team hung together late at night in a different time zone and competed its tail off into the fourth quarter. Ultimately disappointing. One play never is the reason why you lose a game, but I think we certainly showed improvement. It’s something to build on as we get ready for Virginia.
On what positives have shown themselves: Our team has been focused all year in spite of the noise on the outside. Our team has really bought into the program. I think one of the reasons you keep people interested is improvement, right? It’s no different than when you go on a diet and you lose five pounds. You can’t wait to continue the diet, right? You want to get going. What stops people from losing weight is they can’t lose the first three pounds and all of a sudden they give up. Whereas our team has made incredible strides in terms of conditioning, in terms of their ability to improve their footwork, their fundamentals, and the players see it. I think if you were in our locker room after the game, there wasn’t a sense of “Oh well, we were close.” No, there was a sense of, “We should have won,” which carries over into the next week and then we have to have a good week of practice this week. So we’re excited about getting back to work. That’s what we’re doing. We’re building a program here, and programs don’t happen overnight. But what happens day by day is the resolve and the commitment that each player brings to the table when you work and put time and effort in.
On the Virginia game this weekend: Virginia has played really well this year. They had a really tough win against Washington State. Washington State led the entire game until the final two minutes of the game where they were able to record a safety late in the game and won the game 22-20. So there will be a great challenge for our players. Yesterday we had a very spirited practice, and we’ll get ready this week for them and meet the challenge that awaits us. That’s the best thing about ACC competition, is we get to learn more about our team every single week and we’re gonna go out there and compete and improve. And I think what we saw on Friday night needs to carry over into Saturday afternoon and we’ll get the fans out and show them that there’s something to be proud of here at North Carolina.
On his message to the fans: Look, everybody’s frustrated with not winning, but we’re building something that is sustainable and it’s gonna continue to grow. And ultimately, to have the fans’ engagement is important and we wanna win as much as anybody, and we need the fans’ support there as much as the players do to help us create momentum moving forward. We’re going to build this program the right way and the fans are gonna buy in because we’re eventually gonna win.
Listen below for the full conversation with Michael Lombardi, and tune in to hear the segment live on Monday mornings each game week!
Featured image via UNC Athletic Communications/Jeffrey A. Camarati
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