Roy Williams Praises Oklahoma State After UNC’s 32-Point Win

North Carolina torched Oklahoma State on Tuesday in Maui 107-75 on the heels (pardon the pun!) of OSU’s win over UConn. Carolina looked untouchable for stretches, and OSU had no answers whatsoever. They were like me during most of my accounting tests in college.

UNC coach Roy Williams nevertheless praised Brad Underwood’s squad after the whipping.

“We feel really good,” said Williams. “That’s the best way to put it. But I told Brad this and I believe it — we gave our team a very honest evaluation of their team. I was really impressed with their team yesterday. I was really impressed watching them on tape.

“They played at an energy level much, much higher than anybody we’ve played this year, and they made us play with an energy level much higher than we’ve played at any other time this year. I think that they got our focus. That’s encouraging to me to see how we can do when we really focus and play at that same energy level.

“But I will say it again. Oklahoma State was so good, we felt like we had to play extremely hard and extremely intelligent and really well to have a chance. And we did for the most part did that all night.”

Pretty heady praise for a team that just lost by five touchdowns. It’s easy to do so when you’re the victor, and Williams seems like the king of loving other squads when things go well for his own. But maybe he’s right. His players agreed anyway.

“And we knew that they were going to come out and try to hit us first,” said guard Joel Berry after his team jumped to an 18-5 lead. “And so we had to hit them first. And I think we did a good job of doing that.”

Brad Underwood thought the “being punched in the mouth” metaphor was apropos.

“Boy, did they punch us in the mouth early,” said Underwood. And it was an uphill battle from there. And all the credit — that’s a very, very good basketball team. If we play a better basketball team this year than them, boy, I hope it’s deep into March, if we do, and we’ve got an opportunity to grow.”

Yeah, I hope so too.

Now OSU closes with No. 25 Georgetown in a winnable finale in Maui. Underwood is fired up about playing UConn-UNC-Georgetown on consecutive days.

“This is the premier event,” said Underwood. And for one reason. We open with UConn. We get North Carolina. And now we get Georgetown. And there’s no other event, and I’ll argue with anybody, there’s no event out there that puts eight really good teams in an event.

“Most of them are two or three or four and you get a couple of cupcakes. Okay. I get it. This is elite because of it. Now, you put it here and it’s made special in part because of the location. Not everybody gets to come here.”

Hopefully Oklahoma State gets to leave with two Ws.