UNC Locker Room Reactions: Florida State

UNC beat Florida State 79-66 in the ACC opener at the Smith Center Tuesday night. Check out what the Tar Heels had to say about the win:

Kyan Evans

On playing with fellow guard Derek Dixon: Derek’s a really good guard. He was making a lot of plays out there, he had it going a little bit. That lineup’s good. I think we have a lot of great lineups that we can put out on the floor. We’re both just trying to make the right play every time, and that’s gonna help out everybody on the court.

On the team’s performance: We had to play hard. We knew what they were gonna do and they were gonna come in and play hard and they were wanting to get a lot of threes up and we wanted to hold them to as few as possible. I think that had a little bit to do with it. We put together a pretty good game today.

On his three-point shooting: Everybody’s talking to me, letting me know that they’re with me and they want me to stay aggressive. My teammates are doing a good job of finding me and I think I’m finding shots. I’ve just gotta knock them down.

Henri Veesaar

On the difference between his performance in the first half and second half: I wasn’t playing the way I should be playing, so I think that was a big part of it. I maybe was a little tired from getting back [from the holiday break] and with the practices. I feel like we settled in better in the second half… we put ourselves in better positions.

On Kyan Evans’ performance: I hope he shoots 12 threes for us every game. He’s a great shooter and that shows how good he is and I hope that everybody has the confidence in him to take every shot. We know he’s a good shooter and I hope that in the following games he’s gonna keep shooting it the way he is right now.

On Hubert Davis’ coaching preferences for threes: Hubert always tells us to take the great ones. Don’t take the one in the first 10 seconds with a half-contest or a contest. Getting the good shooters the ball in the first couple seconds and them getting an open shot? Yes, that’s a good shot. But the other part is that a shot that’s a good shot in the first 10 seconds is a little bit different than it is in the last 10 seconds.

Seth Trimble

On Caleb Wilson’s performance: He’s an incredible basketball player. The energy that he plays with, the things that he’s able to do, it does so much more than just giving us a boost. It does so much for us. For him to do that tonight, it was incredible. He made a ton of great plays off the post, off the catches off the elbow today. He got doubled a lot. He drew a lot of crowds and he did a great job not forcing anything and making the right play.

On the team’s performance on the fast break: North Carolina’s always been a team that plays out in transition, plays at a fast pace. So we just capitalize out of that. We get a board, I do a good job of sprinting out, other guys do a great job of sprinting out. It’s just as simple as that. We’ve always wanted to run in transition.

On what contributed to the team’s second-half run: We wanted to get the ball in the post in the first half as much as we could, and we had a very hard time doing it. They crowded in and that’s where a lot of those open threes that we just did not convert on came from. We weren’t able to play through the post too much tonight, but we were able to capitalize off other things.

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UNC Locker Room Reactions: Florida State

Kyan Evans

Henri Veesaar

Seth Trimble

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