UNC beat No. 19 Kansas 87-74 at the Smith Center Friday night. Check out what the Tar Heels had to say about the big win:
Seth Trimble
On snapping UNC’s losing streak vs. Kansas: This game meant so much for us. The history with Kansas and UNC obviously runs so deep. We haven’t beat Kansas in 23 years. So I made sure that we knew that, that we hadn’t beat them in 23 years. And I made sure that we knew that we protect our home court no matter who comes in here… I told them guys in the locker room, we represent this university tonight. We protect our floor and we’re not losing. We’re North Carolina. And to not be a team for 23 years, that’s a lot of years.
On the performance in the second half: Man, that was a pretty complete second half. It was incredible. Everybody stepped up so much in that second half. I still feel like I played pretty bad, but I stepped it up a little bit. That was complete. We played so well on the defensive end, we rebounded well, got to the free throw line. We let up a little bit with three minutes left to go. But that was our only lapse.
On the matchup with Kansas’ Darryn Peterson: I know I’m a really good defender. But he’s an elite scorer, as you saw tonight. I feel like we played incredible defense on him and we made it very, very tough. And he still had 22. He’s that kind of guy where he’s gonna make shots, he’s gonna get to his spots and he’s gonna play well. So you’ve just gotta make it as tough as you can. I feel like we did a really good job of that tonight.
Caleb Wilson
On Henri Veesaar’s performance: He’s a dawg. I don’t got nothing else to say. He holds me accountable on the court. If I don’t box out, he’ll come to me and say, “Come on Caleb, we gotta box out,” in a meaner tone. But Henri’s my guy. He pushes me. He pushes me to be better every day. And he always holds me accountable. It’s nice to have a vet like that with him, because he’s taught me so many little things, like touch shots and things like that. Henri’s a great guy. He played a great game.
On Kyan Evans’ performance: He just went out there and played confident like we wanted him to. At halftime I was saying in the locker room, “You gotta be aggressive.” I was like, “Man, Kyan, you a dawg, bro. He can’t guard you.” I was telling him, Melvin Council was guarding him with his back to him full court. Like, “You a top-tier guard, bro. You can’t let that happen.” And I was trying to tell him and explain it to him and then he just went off. So I was happy for him.
On diving after loose balls on the court: I’ve played so many roles in my life on the basketball court. I’ve been the last person on the bench and I’ve been the star. I carry all those traits with me. If the ball’s on the floor, I’m trying to go get it. Coach Davis always tells me we’ve gotta win every 50-50 ball and that’s a 50-50 ball, so I’m gonna go be aggressive and go get it.
Henri Veesaar
On the team’s halftime adjustments: We knew that we had been really sloppy and we needed to stop that. I had four turnovers in the first half and that’s horrible. So we learned, because they were being really aggressive in the first half. We settled in, understood what their defensive plan was and how we can break it down.
On how the team can improve: We still messed a couple things up. We let Peterson shoot that many threes and make them. We just need to loosen some screws up in the first half. Second half we played great, but first half we didn’t play good at all. So just being able to stack two good halves is what takes to win great games.
On the scene in the postgame locker room: We were just happy. We were all celebrating, just showing all our emotions, talking our trash in the locker room. Because we knew how hard we worked for this and the way we played against BYU was so disappointing for us. We had eyes on this game, knowing that we really needed to show everybody how good we can be this year.
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