By R.L. Bynum
Never mind trying to make a 3-point attempt with a defender’s hand in your face.
RJ Davis and girlfriend Deja Kelly, both senior North Carolina guards who have led their teams to the NCAA tournament, had a bigger challenge a couple of weeks ago in the kitchen of Davis’ apartment.
In a social-media video promoting Keurig coffee makers, they had a competition to see who could shoot one of the K-Cup pods into the K-Cup holder, with the loser buying the winner dinner.
“It’s pretty hard,” Kelly said on Friday after her Tar Heels knocked off Michigan State 59–56 with the help of her two late free throws. “It took us like 30 minutes to actually make it in the Keurig, but it was fun. We had a lot of fun. But it took a while. It took a lot of shots.”
Neither of them practiced before the competition began, so there were numerous near misses and plenty of frustration. At one point, Davis declares, “This is depressing.”
Finally, Kelly hit the game-winner as a pod landed perfectly positioned upright in the holder.
“We both didn’t practice, so that’s why I won fair because we both didn’t have extra practice. That’s why I just said I was better at it,” said Kelly, who has scored 34 3-pointers this season and 17.8 points per game.
Davis joked in the video that it was rigged before saying that Kelly won fair and square. He was still joking about it again on Wednesday in Charlotte.
“It was rigged, though,” Davis said, “because there were a couple of shots that I felt like were going in, just didn’t go my way, it flipped upside down.”
Davis, who broke the single-season UNC record for 3-pointers with 110 and counting, clearly prefers shooting a basketball outside of the arc over trying to land a pod into a coffee maker.
“That was hard,” Davis said. “I thought it was impossible. But she did fair and square beat me. I’m not going to sit here and act like a sore loser. She did beat me. So, credit to here; it was awfully hard.”
Kelly’s reward? Davis took her out to dinner at Stoney River Steakhouse and Grill on Estes Drive. Both can afford such high-end dining with all the NIL money they are earning.
Photo via screenshot
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