Midway through the 2021-22 season, the UNC basketball program looked to be on its way to miss the NCAA Tournament. It had blowout losses to Purdue, Tennessee, Kentucky, Miami and Wake Forest and was far from the team that made a National Championship runner-up run to end the season.
A lot of that had to do with the play of Armando Bacot and the way he responded to the media continually calling the UNC team ‘soft’. Nobody in the media was more at the center of that discussion than Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman.
On Friday, Goodman invited Bacot on his podcast and the two discussed the end of season run and the comments from Goodman that spurred the great finish to the season.
Bacot said that was a big part to the run for the Tar Heels.
As soon as I saw that video, that was like one of the motivating factors. I said, I’m going to see him at the final four.
Bacot continued saying that before UNC’s win at NC State, head coach Hubert Davis played the clip of Goodman on repeat.
It pissed all of us off. It was right before at (NC) State and I’ll never forget it. Coach turned on the tv and played that clip and that’s literally all that was said before the game. There was no scouting report or nothing. It fired us all up.
North Carolina went on to win 11 of the last 13 games after that comment, including beating Duke twice to end the season.
The full interview can be found here.
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