Hubert Davis Post-Duke Quotes

Postgame Quotes
March 5, 2022 – vs. Duke

NORTH CAROLINA HEAD COACH HUBERT DAVIS

On how he is feeling:
"I don't know what I'm feeling right now. I've said to a number of people that the last 11 months being the head coach has been so busy. I haven't really had time to think, but just to think about what these kids did tonight with all the noise, coming back from the way that we played at home against Duke. All week we talked about our competitive fight. We had to do three things: We had to plant our feet. We had to stand our ground, and that we had to fight, and if we did those three things, it would put us in a position to do something that a lot of people didn't think we had the chance to do. I just felt like as the game went on we started to just gain more and more confidence. I said this is the healthiest that our team has been all season. The togetherness is the best that it has been all season and not just this game. I just remember after losing against Wake Forest and to think that we've won 11 of our last 13 games, it's just really special. I'm so proud of them. They continue to hear stories and testimonies and the memories from me and Coach Lebo and Coach May and one of the things that I desperately wanted, I wanted them to have their own memories, their own testimonies, their own stories of making big shots, being in big moments in a Carolina uniform. They're gathering that now, so as a coach, that's just really neat to see them have their own experiences and it's just a lot of fun."

On how his team responded to the bright lights and the matchup in Cameron:
"One of the things that we always talk about is to focus on the things that we can control and we weren't a part of all the festivities. We weren't a part of GameDay. Our focus was on our preparation and our practice to put us in a position to play our best. I kept giving them Proverbs 4:25. Keep your eyes straight ahead. Ignore all side-show distractions. Every day on the practice plan, I put in Proverbs 4:25. I said, 'You guys just focus on the things that you need to focus on. Let all that side-show stuff go on and let's focus on what we need to do to put ourselves in a position to be successful.'"

On if there is a sense of validation for him after Duke win:
"No. Not at all. I told you guys I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on message boards. I'm not on chat rooms. I'm not on any of that. I'm just not. I do this job because I feel like Jesus has given me this opportunity to be in these kids' lives and to help them, to coach them, to be the best that they can be on the court, in the classroom, in the community. It's a place that I'm very thankful to be at. That's where my focus is. I don't do this job for anything else other than serving these kids and helping them the same way that Coach [Dean] Smith and Coach [Bill] Guthridge helped me when I was here. In the same way that Coach [Roy] Williams helped every one of his players that he coached for 18 years."

On what made him choose Brady Manek to assume challenge of guarding Paolo Banchero:
"The first time that we played them, we tried to mix and match all the lineups. It just didn't work. I told them these are the matchups. Whoever is playing the power forward position, Brady [Manek], that's you. Whoever is playing center, Armando [Bacot], that's you. I went down the line and just said we're going to man up. You're going to have to guard Paolo [Banchero] and he's one of the best players in the country and you're going to have to fight and compete on every play. I thought he really did a good job with that, but I really believe also in the second half, like in the first half, they got 30 points in the paint and so we were just hugging our guys who were off the ball. Paolo, he's just too talented, he was able to get to the rim really easy. I just felt like a combination of Brady playing well defensively and then #2, our help defense was really good closing up those gaps and not giving Paolo a lot of space to be able to go one on one and be able to score."

On how he can use this win to motivate his players going in to the postseason:
"They're [Duke] not a Final Four contender. They're a national championship contender. It was important for us to win, but it was really important for us to play well. You mentioned 'quad 1 wins.' The times that we have played ranked opponents like Tennessee, Purdue, good teams like Wake Forest and Miami, Kentucky. Not only did we lose, we lost big. I think it was important for us to be good against a good team. Not that the other teams weren't good, but against a top 5 team. I could just see throughout the game our confidence just growing from each possession and this is going to go a long way, but this is just the start. We're not taking our foot off the gas pedal. We're not celebrating and saying the season is over. Our hopes is to go as far as we can in the ACC tournament and our hope is to go as far as we can in the NCAA tournament."

On being a "different kind of locked in":
"I'm always locked in. That's the problem with them. I'm locked in all the time. I always tell them 'I'm there. I'm there.' There isn't a different type of locked in. I'm always locked in. They're not always locked in, so I appreciate Armando saying that. It was very simple in our preparation for this game. Like I said before, it was about our competitive fight."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Brady Manek

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