The sky didn’t fall after all on Wednesday night.

A strange air filled the Dean Dome before and during the Davidson game. Even after Roy Williams criticized the home crowds this season, barely half the building was full for the 9 p.m. tipoff. Certainly you couldn’t blame it on not enough time to get to the game, more getting home too late is my guess. Plus, it was on TV.

Joel Berry walked out in a suit and his left foot in a beige boot halfway up his calf, holding his ankle sprain in a healing position for his return at least by the Kentucky game a week from Saturday. Berry took his place on the bench next to broken-footed Theo Pinson in what was supposed to be Carolina’s starting back court this season.

Then in the first minute of the play, so many particles were falling from the dome of the Smith Center that the officials stopped the game until the shower ended, and no one quite knew how it started. Then Davidson ran off to a 7-0 lead and it looked like it could be a long night for the home team and its fourth straight home crowd under 15,000 patrons.

This was not the Carolina team that looked unbeatable in Maui before falling to No. 7 after the loss at Indiana. The Heels shot a season-low 37 percent, and the out-rebounded and turnover-prone Wildcats erased almost all of what had been a 16-point deficit. Thanks goes to Justin Jackson, the only Heel playing up to snuff, whose career-high seven three-pointers from his retooled shot helped him match his career-high 27 points from opening night.

No one else played great the whole way through, and the late run from Davidson got the Cats to one possession from a tie. You could say it was a team effort, as all 10 Tar Heels who played got double-digit minutes, from Stillman’s White career-high six points in 11 minutes to the 31 toiled by Jackson and Nate Britt.

Since getting socked in the mouth the first few minutes at Indiana, Carolina has been like a gallant fighter eventually going down. Berry needs to shed the boot and that course needs to be reversed before the sky starts falling again.

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