After The Daily Tar Heel obtained a video of two North Carolina men's basketball players celebrating the team's 91-87 win over Duke without wearing masks, UNC head coach Roy Williams addressed the situation with reporters via Zoom on Friday morning.
Earlier this week, Williams released a statement saying that his players, including teammates and managers not shown in the video the DTH published, realize they made a mistake, "for which they are paying a very significant price." Williams declined to go any further into the specifics of those punishments in Friday's press conference, noting that the team was handling the issue internally.
The North Carolina head coach did add that the team will be "full personnel" for Saturday's game against Virginia.
"It was not at a fraternity house," Williams said on Friday. "It was not on Franklin Street. It was within our group of players and managers, and a few, very few, other people got involved. It’s something — and I don’t think (former player) Jeff Lebo would mind me saying this — I told Jeff Lebo that our team did the same thing he did 100 times, but there was nobody putting it on video.
"I was upset about it, I’m still upset about it, but let’s not make it out like we charged the Capitol building or anything like that," he continued. "That’s not what it was, it was not a freestanding party at some fraternity house or in the middle of Franklin Street."
The Tar Heels' contest against Miami on Monday was canceled just a few hours before the opening tip after personnel from both schools met and mutually agreed that the game could not happen that day, according to a release from the ACC.
