The North Carolina players and team managers released a statement of apology on Tuesday after a video showing multiple players partying without masks after Saturday’s victory over Duke forced the postponement of Monday’s game against Miami.
Two hours before Monday’s men’s basketball game between Miami and North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the ACC announced that both teams had mutually agreed to postpone the game. The decision came hours after The Daily Tar Heel, the North Carolina student newspaper, posted a Snapchat video showing UNC highlights Day’Ron Sharpe and Armando Bacot partying without a mask on, along with other young people who also weren’t wearing masks, Saturday. afterwards. UNC’s 91-87 win over Duke.
In Tuesday’s apology, North Carolina players and managers said Bacot and Sharpe were not alone.
“On Saturday night, a number of players and managers – not just the ones featured on the video – got together to celebrate our victory at Duke,” the statement said. “Our intention was to celebrate privately within our group. Unfortunately we allowed several friends who are not members of the team to participate in the meeting. We were inside and were not wearing masks, which was a mistake.
“We apologize for failing to adhere to the University and Athletics Department guidelines and apologize to Coach Williams and his staff for not coming forward when he first discussed it with us on Sunday. We’ve worked eight months too hard to do the right things to make those kinds of mistakes at this point of the season. We hope we can play again soon and want to remind everyone to stay safe so that this pandemic is so soon may be over. “
In the short video published by The Daily Tar Heel, Sharpe and Bacot, who together scored 27 points in the victory over their main rivals Saturday, are found hanging out in a room with several people while music plays in the background.
While the competition statement did not provide any specifics, the ACC’s health and safety protocols state multiple reasons for delaying a game, including the “inability to perform adequate contact tracking in accordance with government requirements or recommendations” and the “inability to isolate new positive cases, or to quarantine cases of high contact risk from the traveling college students and the home team.”
Roy Williams said in a statement that he was pleased that his players and managers apologized.
“I appreciate that the players have expressed their apologies,” Williams said in the statement. “They’ve made a mistake. They’ve been fantastic for over eight months in the way they handled the whole situation with the virus. But they realize they’ve made a mistake, for which they are paying a very high price.”
The school has not said how Saturday’s video could affect matches after Monday’s game against Miami.