UNC basketball wing Cormac Ryan (Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)
Resilient UNC Basketball Wing: 'Locker Room of Guys Has My Back'
After trailing at the half against unranked Northern Iowa (1-3) on Wednesday afternoon, UNC basketball found its hot hands following the break. Or maybe the 14th-ranked Tar Heels (4-0) just liked the rims and view better on the other end of the court at the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Cormac Ryan is a notably resilient 25-year-old graduate wing who, despite going scoreless in the first half, enjoyed his first bounce-back shooting performance as a Tar Heel since transferring from Notre Dame. He credits the immediate 32-6 second-half run and eventual 91-69 win to the belief in one another permeating this year's locker room.
"We really showed a lot of fight and toughness coming out of halftime," he explained, "not just physically, but mentally to kind of step up and take big shots — and make shots."
Ryan was 0-for-3 beyond the arc entering halftime, bumping his miss streak to 11.
But the 6-foot-5, 195-pound New York native, a full-time Tar Heel starter thus far, drained his first three attempts from deep in the second half. Those buckets helped to ignite the good times for the Tar Heels. He finished with a season-high 15 points, shooting 3-or-8 from 3-point land and 6-for-6 at the charity stripe across his 28 minutes on the floor.
"The thing that I can do best to help this team is make shots," Ryan explained. "At the end of the day, you got to put points on the board. We had a tremendous second half scoring the ball and defending. But I know there's a locker room full of guys that have my back, and that makes it easy for me."
Cormac Ryan, now averaging 9.0 points as a UNC basketball player and boasting a career 34.9 shooting percent from downtown (including three seasons at Notre Dame and his freshman campaign at Stanford), has shot 6-for-22 from deep (27.3 percent).
He and the Tar Heels face unranked Villanova (4-1) in the Battle 4 Atlantis semifinals on Thanksgiving Day at 2:30 p.m. ET (ESPN).
STREAM: fuboTV (start your free trial)
Stay tuned to All Tar Heels on SI.com for more UNC basketball news.
