Roy Williams isn’t going to panic. He’s seen this before.
North Carolina returned to practice this week trying to repair everything that went wrong in a 90-57 blowout loss at Florida State on Saturday.
The Tar Heels are 15-3 (2-1 in the ACC) this season, with all three losses coming on the road.
“I don’t want to over-react, but that was a real butt-kicking that you can’t just ignore, either,’’ Williams said on the ACC teleconference. “Even when we were winning nine in a row, or whatever it was, go back to the press conferences, I wasn’t always saying glowing things. I was saying, ‘Our team’s got to get better.’ And that’s the same party line today. It’s just that it hits the kids right between the eyes more than me saying it.”
Williams also has apologized for leaving five backups on the court when he took the rest of the team to the locker room with 14.2 seconds left to avoid being crushed by the crowd poised to rush the court.
He said a miscommunication with assistant coach Joe Holladay left five reserves to face the masses. Two other assistants and two managers helped the players work their way to North Carolina’s locker room.
Williams said he didn’t realize his players had been left until he watched the game tape.
“We didn’t get off the bus looking good; we didn’t warm up looking good; we didn’t shoot the ball; we didn’t defend; we didn’t rebound; we didn’t coach, and evidently we didn’t exit the floor well enough for everybody,” Williams said on his weekly radio show. “There’s not one blessed thing that we did that was good down there.”
Hot shot
Deividas Dulkys had scored 32 points combined in his previous nine games before making eight 3-pointers and matching that total in Florida State’s upset of North Carolina. He had averaged 7.7 points entering the Seminoles’ game against Maryland on Tuesday.
Have not
If the loss wasn’t bad enough, North Carolina’s John Henson missed all seven of his free-throw attempts against Florida State. He’s the only ACC player to fail to make at least one in that many attempts in a game in the past 15 seasons, according to ESPN.
On a roll
N.C. State’s Scott Wood needs four more free throws to set the ACC record for consecutive free throws. He’s made 51 in a row, 41 of those this season. Former Duke guard J.J. Redick holds the mark with 53 consecutive in 2003-04.
Dennis Clifford has scored at least 10 points in six of Boston College’s past seven games. He has averaged 14.8 points and six rebounds in that stretch.
Maryland’s James Padgett leads the ACC with 4.4 offensive rebounds per game and has had at least five in nine games.
Local ties
DeQuan Jones thought he wouldn’t get to play this season. The former Wheeler High star was caught up in the Nevin Shapiro scandal at Miami and initially was suspended for the entire season.
But that was reduced to 10 games, and Jones has seen action in the past five.
The senior guard provided key minutes off the bench in the Hurricanes’ win at Charlotte on Dec. 20 and has scored nine points in two ACC games.
“It kind of ate me up a little bit,” Jones told the Miami Herald. “I never showed my sadness or my frustration, [but] it was tearing me up just sitting on the sideline watching my teammates play and not being able to help.”
Around the conference
Kenny Kadji, a 6-foot-11 center from Cameroon who sat out last season after transferring from Florida, has averaged 20 points and eight rebounds in Miami’s past three games. He has double-doubles in three of the past four games. ... Virginia’s Mike Scott leads ACC players with 1,231 career points, 822 rebounds and 29 double-doubles. … Duke and Wake Forest have played every year since 1920-21. They meet again Wednesday night. … N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried said C.J. Leslie will return to the starting lineup after being benched for the start of Saturday’s win over Wake Forest for an incident at practice.
Must-see TV
North Carolina at Virginia Tech, 9 p.m. Thursday (ESPN).
Can the Tar Heels bounce back? The Hokies are 0-3 in the ACC, but those three losses have been by a combined nine points (three, four and two).
Quotable
“The reality is, is that we’re playing young right now. We haven’t been able to finish out games. We haven’t been able to come up with the plays that we need to come up with. We’re still defining for some of our players what playing hard really is. … It’s not like we’re way off. There are some things that we need to tighten up in terms of finishing games.” — Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg
By the numbers
7.6 Assist average for N.C. State's Lorenzo Brown (Centennial) in the past nine games
85 Consecutive weeks that Duke has been ranked in the AP's top 10, an ACC-record
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