North Carolina is seeking a dose of mental toughness in the wake of the Tar Heels’ 90-57 defeat against Florida State over on Saturday.
Even in some of its most dominant victories this season, the Tar Heels have, at times, lacked poise and intensity. Roy Williams hasn’t questioned his team’s effort, and after the debacle at Florida State he said, “I don’t think our guys laid down.” But, right before he said that, he said this: “It definitely comes back to poise, there’s no question about that.”
The defeat against the Seminoles represented the Tar Heels’ third consecutive on the road. And they appeared rattled in certain moments of all three defeats – in the second half at UNLV on Nov. 26, in the final moments at Kentucky on Dec. 3, and now throughout at FSU on Saturday. Asked what the loss taught him, the junior guard Dexter Strickland said, “That we still have areas where we need to grow. Having that toughness to where we have to stay focused when we’re down like that.”
Said Harrison Barnes: “[We] weren’t mentally focused enough to get it done.”
And John Henson: “We didn’t come ready to play today.”
UNC has as much, if not more, physical talent than any team in the country. But the Heels challenge now is to become stronger mentally. Much stronger, after what happened on Saturday in Tallahassee, Fla.
There's more on this topic here.
-- Andrew Carter
Monday, January 16, 2012
Tar Heels admit they weren't tough enough vs. FSU
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
There's always football season!
Safe to say this team isn't going to win the Natl Championship. Sorry, Wal-Mart Nation.
Heels were destroyed for sure vs. FSU...still don't know if they were decimated like that 85-50 loss to Duke 2 years ago. Duke was up by 27 AT THE HALF vs. Roy's Heels. 2nd half was a formality.
UNC lost at Wake Forest (Rodney Rogers) by 26 pts in 1993 before going on to win the title. Not unheard of, but this team has some issues, without question.
I've never seen a team leave early, that speaks volumes for the mentality of Roy and his team.
I've always heard fans chant "start the bus" but i've never seen a team leave early, haha.
It was total disrespect to the walk on players at UNC, the team at FSU, and to sports in general. A team should play its best and compete till the end and respect itself and its opponents. That was arrogance at its best.
What's next? Leave when you're down by 15 with 3 minutes to go ??
Heels won it in '93? I thought C-Webb's timout won it.
Thanks for the sensible critique. Me and my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research about this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more from this post. I am very glad to see such excellent info being shared freely out there.
Blue Microphones Icicle XLR to USB Mic Converter/Mic Preamp
Post a Comment