Slumping Tar Heels Head To Miami In Hopes Of Recovery Effort

The No. 15 North Carolina men’s basketball team, 19-9 overall and 9-6 in ACC action, hits the road to sunny south Florida to take on the 18-10 Miami Hurricanes Saturday afternoon. The Tar Heels will desperately be looking to get back on track after dropping five of their last seven games.

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If there’s such a thing as a must-win game, Saturday’s tilt at the BankUnited Center is one of those.

The Hurricanes, winners of three of their last four contests, are fighting to secure their place on the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble while the Tar Heels need to build up their shaken confidence here on the doorstep of the postseason.

Likely most concerning for UNC head coach Roy Williams has been the late-game miscues that have repeatedly cost his squad vital victories.

The end-game woes all started with the collapse at Louisville, continued in the disappointment at Duke and stung most recently in the N.C. State loss.

“Silly poise. No poise. I’ve never had a play where our big guy shoots a three-point shot, unless he could really shoot threes. Kennedy [Meeks] just didn’t know what to do so he shot it. We had a set play called twice in a row and didn’t execute that so that’s the Coach’s fault,” Coach Williams says.

Junior forward Brice Johnson, who struggled mightily Tuesday night against the Wolfpack with a 1-6 shooting mark, says the Tar Heels need to leave their struggles behind them and focus on the here and now.

“That was awful. We got to do better. We got to be ready to play from the tip. We didn’t. They came here and beat us. We can’t let that happen, but it did. We got to bounce back from it. We’ve been in this predicament before,” Johnson says.

Coach Williams says his team needs to get tougher and take it to opponents at the rim for a full forty minutes going forward.

“Pump fake and go at him strong. Don’t pump fake 17 times and then try to make the softest shot in the history of basketball. You got to be tough. It’s a physical game. You’ve got to be strong,” Coach Williams says.

UNC’s toughness will likely be put to the test Saturday against Miami head coach Jim Larranaga’s bunch. Junior guards Sheldon McClellan and Angel Rodriguez are capable of taking over a game.

Last time out, Rodriguez did just that, running over the rival  FSU Seminoles with ruthless authority to the tune of 25 points.

UNC would do well to get its scoring leader, junior guard Marcus Paige, back into the flow. Coach Williams says the rest of the team, though, needs to do a better job of helping him out.

“He’s an emphasis for the other team. We’ve got to do a better job of getting him open. He’s got to do a better job moving, but other guys got to be able to step up and make a shot every now and then too,” Coach Williams says.

Paige says it’s not the defense that’s got him concerned. But with nights like Tuesday, where the Tar Heels shot a mere 35 percent from the floor and totaled a Smith Center low in points, the offense is another issue altogether.

“We need to play better. We were getting decent shots, but we weren’t giving them a chance to get us layups. In the second half we got a bunch of layups, got back in the game and made it interesting, and then we kind of deviated from that again. We need to play better offensively. Offensively, we just kind of stunk it up,” Paige says.

Despite the discouraging slide of late, UNC remains in the hunt for that coveted No. 4 seed in the ACC Tournament. But it can ill-afford a slip-up in the Sunshine State.