In what has seemingly become a yearly tradition, the UNC men’s basketball team traveled to Charlottesville on Saturday night and had its offense rendered obsolete in a 60-48 loss to No. 9 Virginia.
The Tar Heels (12-7, 7-5 ACC) set a new season-low in scoring while being held below 50 points for the fourth consecutive year at Virginia.
The Cavaliers (15-3, 11-1 ACC) opened the game on a 21-4 run over the first 10 minutes of action and would lead for the rest of the evening, grinding UNC’s offense into submission for what was their seventh straight win overall against the Tar Heels.
Virginia’s roster may look a lot different than the team that won the national championship in 2019, but head coach Tony Bennett’s slow pace and pack-line defense still proved to be the most effective kryptonite against the up-tempo attack preferred by UNC head coach Roy Williams.
The Tar Heels’ last win in the rivalry came back in February of 2017.
“Tony [Bennett] does a great job,” Williams told reporters afterwards. “They’ve got good players. I mean, they won the national championship in that time period too—and they had three guys, [Kyle] Guy, [Ty] Jerome and [DeAndre] Hunter, that were all three [NBA] draft choices. They’re a great team and Tony does a great job with them.”
Freshman forward Walker Kessler played just 12 minutes off the bench for the Tar Heels, but still managed to lead the team in scoring with nine points—all of which were scored in the second half.
Fellow freshman Kerwin Walton added eight points and went 2-for-6 from three-point range, while the rest of the team combined to shoot 0-for-10 from long range.
UNC did tie its season-low with only eight turnovers—which is crucial against a team that limits possessions like Virginia—but failed to capitalize with its poor shooting performance. Only one time all season have the Tar Heels shot worse than their 34.5 percent mark from the field on Saturday.
“They sag in away from the ball,” Williams said, about Virginia’s defense. “You’re gonna get some open shots, but you’ve got to make open shots. You’ve got to be able to make shots to have success against them. If you’re not making shots, it’s a long, long night.”
This performance against one of the nation’s top defenses came just one week after UNC appeared to be turning the corner offensively with a season-high 91 points in a win at Duke.
The Cavaliers were led Saturday by forward Jay Huff, a Durham native who finished with 18 points and 12 rebounds. It was the fourth straight win overall for Virginia, which remains atop the ACC standings with an 11-1 record against conference opponents.
UNC’s record of 7-5 in the league is good enough for a fifth-place tie alongside Clemson, showing that the Tar Heels still have work to do if they want to have a chance of making the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve got to take their attention to detail,” Williams said. “Their attention to detail on the defensive end of the floor is extremely important to them. We’ve got to make attention to detail on the defensive end of the floor more important to us.”
Up Next:
With Tuesday’s originally scheduled game against Virginia Tech getting postponed, next on the docket for the Tar Heels is a home showdown against Louisville on Saturday, Feb. 20. Tip-off is scheduled for 6 p.m.
Game Notes:
- The Tar Heels scored just 18 points in the first half for the second straight year in Charlottesville. Those represent the two lowest scoring halves since Roy Williams took over as head coach prior to the 2003-04 season.
- Virginia’s current seven-game winning streak against UNC is the longest the Cavaliers have had in the 144-game history of the rivalry.
- UNC made just 10 of its 25 lay-up attempts.
- Of the Tar Heels’ 48 total points, 28 were scored inside the paint and just six came on the fastbreak.
Photo via Andrew Shurtleff (The Daily Progress)
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Just can’t believe we couldn’t have a better game plan than what I witnessed last Saturday against Virginia. Has our coaching staff just given up on trying to win against UVA. If you see them going on those cold spells of shooting then you must use back to back to back timeouts until you figure out what is going on. This trend has become the norm for Roy Williams coached teams as of the last several years and it is time he made some changes in his coaching style. Anyone with a little knowledge of college basketball would realize that calling timeouts is to the benefit of the players as well as to stop some of the other team’s momentum. Not old Roy though, he would rather wait for the tv timeouts and by then it is too late. And why does he feel the need to just substitute in new players into the game instead of just settling down his starters and giving them a chance to find a groove by setting up plays during a timeout. It is beginning to look like UNC just doesn’t want to win anymore and let me be the first to tell tell you that is not the Carolina Way. We should have played the entire game one on one and pressuring UVA from the time they threw the ball in. Change the coaching strategy Roy because everyone and I mean everyone knows what you are going to do during the game even before we step onto the court.