Hubert Davis issues urgent challenge to North Carolina basketball after ugly loss to Cal

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The start of the 2025-26 season was a promising one for Hubert Davis and North Carolina basketball, but the Tar Heels are falling on some hard times in ACC play. That continued on Saturday, as North Carolina fell into a big hole on the road against a frisky Cal team before a late comeback attempt fell short in an 84-78 loss.

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This is North Carolina’s second-straight loss and third in four games in conference play in January, after Davis and company also dropped road games against SMU and Stanford. The offense from the Tar Heels has been a bit inconsistent, but the defense is what has really been letting them down. Davis called out exactly that after his team’s latest loss, via Spencer Haskell of On3 Sports.

“Continue to repeat it, continue to drill it, continue to coach it, and continue to hold guys accountable towards it,” Davis said. “And also, throughout the year, everybody goes through some bumps, whether it’s at the beginning of the year, middle of the year, you hope it’s not at the end of the year, and you have to find a way to work through it. And so these are some bumps that we went through this week and three of the last four games, and we’re going to have to respond and fight back.

“We have an opportunity to do this. I love these kids. Got an unbelievable, great team to coach. I love being around them, and we’ll figure it out.”

North Carolina is still fine in the bigger NCAA Tournament picture after a non-conference run that included wins over Kentucky and Kansas, but these losses exposed some problems that the Tar Heels must get fixed in the coming weeks as they get deeper into conference play. The middle of the ACC is much stronger than it has been in years past, and this team will be consistently tested as a result.

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Davis and company should…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/hubert-davis-issues-urgent-challenge-170147488.html

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Publish date : 2026-01-18 17:01:00

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