There's only one word to describe the performance North Carolina mustered together on Tuesday night in Raleigh.
Embarrassing.
Behind a brutal shooting performance, combined with a lackluster defensive effort, North Carolina suffered a blowout loss to NC State.
There's no excuses
Yes, UNC was without Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar. However, that doesn't make an excuse for how poorly the Tar Heels played overall, as they truly got punked by the Wolfpack.
Other than Zayden High (who recorded his first career double-double) and Jarin Stevenson (13 points of his own), the rest of the team was flat-out awful.
Derek Dixon struggled again, missing eight of 9 shots from beyond-the-arc (a trend that impacted the entire team). Seth Trimble, after his 19-point outing against Pittsburgh, made some questionable decisions in an attempt to be a highlight reel guy, scoring just four points on one of 9 shooting from the floor.
As a whole, North Carolina shot 32% from the field and a staggering 15% from deep. If you take High and Stevenson out of the equation, the rest of the team shot 23% from the floor, a completely unacceptable effort.
NC State came to play
The Wolfpack needed the win, and surely came to get it.
Five guys in double-figures, including Quadir Copeland's 20-point, seven-assist effort, as the Tar Heels once again struggled to stop an ACC opponent from having a field day from three-point range.
In a game where UNC needed some impact from deep, they got absolutely nothing in that area.
What's next?
This one will go down as another ugly loss for this UNC team, one that was short-handed but still shouldn't have been flat-out embarrassed the way they were. They have a few days to figure it out before hitting the road to take on Syracuse in a rematch contest on Saturday afternoon.
Hopefully before then, the Tar Heels wake up and figure out that now is the time that they need to start figuring things out, with or without Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar.