Favored North Carolina tips off play in the ACC Tournament on Thursday looking for revenge against Miami, and redemption for the way it lost to the Hurricanes.
Then, the sixth-ranked Tar Heels (26-6) will head to the NCAA Tournament looking to finish the job they fell one step short of last season, when they lost in the national final.
But first, the Tar Heels have another task in mind: avenging their 77-62 loss at Miami when they face the Hurricanes in the ACC quarterfinals at noon at Barclays Center.
“We want to go against Miami because we just felt like we just had a bad game, didn’t shoot the ball well and just felt like we weren’t there to play,” point guard Joel Berry said, hearkening back to that Jan. 28 loss. “That’ll be one of the things on our mind: revenge.
“Last year we checked off all of our goals except for one [winning the NCAA Tournament], and so we want to be able to get back to that point. To be able get back there we’ve just got to have that mindset of every time we go on court give it our all. … That was the talk of this year. We’ve done a great job proving that, even though we lost two big players, we have guys who can produce and have the same season we had last year.”
The biggest producer has been small forward Justin Jackson, the ACC Player of the Year and a prospective NBA lottery pick.
“A lot of the things I’ve gotten this year have been from team success. I’m trying to focus. We’re still trying to win a national championship,’’ Jackson said at the Tar Heels’ team hotel in lower Manhattan. “We got there last year. We weren’t able to finish it. That’s the biggest motivation. I’m just focusing on that.”
The Tar Heels fell just short, losing 77-74 to Villanova in last year’s final. Coach Roy Williams has used that as motivational fodder for a team with both the talent and temperament to make another deep March run — if it can tighten up its defense.
“I just talk to them about, use that as fuel, use that as motivation to work hard over the summer,” WIlliams said. “And for the past three or four weeks, we’ve talked about our improvement on the defensive end of the floor that we need.
“Last year’s team really picked up their activity, picked up their focus on the defensive end of the floor. Half the games in the NCAA and ACC Tournament the opponent shot less than 40 percent from the floor against us, so we got to be a really good defensive team. This team’s not there yet, but I’ve used it that way.”
North Carolina averages an ACC-leading 85.2 points per game, but “[defense] is huge,” Jackson said.
“To win a national championship, to win really any good game against any good team, you have to play defense,” he said. “We’ve done a little better job as the season’s gone on, but we’ve got to lock in on that end of the floor even more now.”
The Tar Heels held a shoot-around for 45 minutes at Barclays Center on Wednesday and got to use the Nets’ HSS Training Center. About the only thing they weren’t prepared for apparently was city traffic.
“We went to the Barclays Center because they gave us 45 minutes there. Going from there to the Nets practice facility, they said it was only a couple of miles. It took us 35 minutes,’’ Williams said. “We’re not used to that kind of thing, to say the least.”