Carolina is getting swamped by a perfect storm – and a Hurricane.

The Tar Heels lost two games on Saturday afternoon, and both were predictable. In his Zoom conference Friday Roy Williams lamented, “We’ve had 18 games so far and only six at home.” The next day, his team played its fourth straight road game because COVID called off the first of two games at the Smith Center over 8 days.

Before the Heels took the floor against an older, tougher and clearly better Virginia team, Tuesday night’s home game with Virginia Tech had been postponed. So, it could be the second straight week with a full week between games. Sounds confusing because it is.

Miami, which left Chapel Hill last Monday after refusing to play despite medical clearance from both staffs, lost at Notre Dame last night to go 3-11 in the ACC and does not play again until Saturday. Yet, the U is saying it will not reschedule the game at UNC in the latest example of schools apparently using COVID to avoid teams they don’t want to play.

Thus, Carolina’s next scheduled opponent is Saturday against Louisville at home. The 6-3 Cardinals have played only nine conference games so far (compared to 7-5 UNC), and will be back in action Wednesday for the first time in 16 days against Syracuse.

At Virginia (now 11-1 in the ACC), what happened was less confusing. The ball-control Cavaliers held the Tar Heels under 50 points for the fourth straight time at home, having now won 103 of their last 105 such games under defensive-minded coach Tony Bennett.

Plus, UVa’s front line of senior center Jay Huff, marksman Marquette senior transfer Sam Hauser and junior Trey Murphy spread the floor and drained 9 of their 14 long balls, compared to Carolina going 2 for 16 on 3-pointers. That 21-point differential alone was enough to produce the 60-48 win, a season scoring low for UNC.

But considering the now 12-7 Tar Heels fell behind 21-4, wound up shooting less than 35 percent overall and missed half of their 12 free throws, their seventh straight loss to Virginia proved even uglier, the first time in more than a hundred years they have lost seven in a row to the Wahoos.

They did manage to break 50 points thrice but still haven’t won in Hookville since 2012, the last season Carolina had a decidedly better team than Virginia.

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