Another loss for Bill Belichick as UNC falls to 2-4

The North Carolina Tar Heels suffered another loss on Friday night but there were positive signs for head coach Bill Belichick.

UNC put up eight points without reply in the fourth quarter but fell to a narrow 18-21 defeat to the California Golden Bears. Making a long trip to California, the Tar Heels put up a solid showing after crossing three time zones to play a strong team.

Earlier this week Belichick spoke to reporters, insisting that the team had made “a lot of improvement” and that he remained fully committed to the project. Speaking after Friday’s three-point loss, Belichick was similarly optimistic.

“I thought we played with confidence,” Belichick said. “We competed hard, we showed toughness. Just have to do some things fundamentally better, obviously.”

“As I’ve said, we’ve been improving every week, so I’m not going to back off that,” Belichick added. “I think that’s true. But you can’t turn the ball over and win. It’s just too hard. And then we’ve got to eliminate some of those kinds of mistakes. We need to tackle better, play better on third down, both sides of the ball.”

“So still, things we need to do that it might have been enough. We hadn’t turned the ball over, but we did, and we didn’t get any turnovers on defense. So until that changes, it’s a little bit of an uphill struggle.”

The Tar Heels offense is starting to fire, breaching the 100-yard mark against a power conference opponent for the first time this season. More work is needed to bring the defense up to Belichick’s lofty standards but the veteran head coach can take some positives from the team’s latest outing.

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