Virginia Drops Second-Straight in 71-63 Loss at North Carolina

The struggles continue for the Cavaliers, who are playing their worst basketball of the season

Matt Riley/Virginia Athletics

Every college basketball team's primary goal is to be playing their best basketball when March arrives. Well, March begins in just a few days and the Cavaliers are undoubtedly playing their worst basketball of the season. 

Missed layups, missed free throws, poor shot selection, bad perimeter defense - the list goes on and on and all signs point to a Virginia team that is entirely out of sorts at the worst possible time of the season. 

UVA gave up 42 points in the first half, then couldn't score for extended stretches in the second half even as UNC left the door open for a comeback, and Virginia trailed wire-to-wire in a 71-63 loss at North Carolina on Saturday night in Chapel Hill. 

North Carolina came into the game with the ACC's worst three-point shooting percentage at 29.9%, making an average of 6.7 threes per game. The Tar Heels knocked down nine three-pointers in the first half on 56.3% shooting. Some of those threes were heavily contested - like Caleb Love's bankshot early in the game and Pete Nance's triple just before the halftime buzzer with Jayden Gardner's hand in his face. But many of UNC's threes were made on wide open attempts, giving the Cavaliers nothing to blame but themselves for letting the ACC's worst three-point shooting team to get red-hot.

In the first meeting between these two teams, Armando Bacot exited the game after just 80 seconds with an ankle injury and did not return. It was anticipated that his presence in the rematch would be a significant factor. It was, as Bacot had 11 points and six rebounds, but an even bigger factor was the performance of Pete Nance, who also missed the first meeting with Virginia. The Northwestern transfer, who came into Saturday's game shooting 28.2% from three on the season, made all four of his three-point attempts in the first half and led all scorers with 22 points in the game. UNC shot 57.7% from the floor in the first half, a season-high in ACC play. 

Virginia, meanwhile, couldn't get much going offensively beyond Jayden Gardner's mid-range jumper. Gardner was 5/8 from the floor with 10 points in the first half, while the rest of the team was just 7/22. The Cavaliers have struggled to produce open looks from three-point range and they simply haven't had the confidence to take contested triples, so they settled for just one made three on only four attempts in the first half. But the more alarming issue was that UVA seemed to lack a willingness to embrace contact at the rim, resulting in countless missed layups. Well, Virginia wishes they were countless at least. The Cavaliers missed a horrendous 17 layups on 25 attempts in the game. 

With the layups not falling and Virginia largely refusing to take three-pointers, the only other option was the mid-range, shots that are fairly low-percentage even when they're open, and the Tar Heels were happy to let the Cavaliers settle for those shots. Behind Nance's 14 first-half points and UVA's dysfunctional offense, North Carolina led by as many as 17 in the first half and took a 42-26 lead into the halftime break. 

UVA began the second half with a 7-0 run, quickly getting back within single digits behind a three and a layup from Ben Vander Plas and a jumper from Gardner. But, Virginia wouldn't get any closer than eight points until the final minute of the game. 

The Tar Heels cooled off offensively in the second half and gave the Cavaliers plenty of opportunities to get back into the game. Virginia simply couldn't score consistently enough. UVA's scoring droughts seemed to parallel UNC's scoring droughts and by the time the Cavaliers scored a bucket or two, the Tar Heels were able to respond with baskets of their own to keep UVA at arm's length. 

A basket from Jayden Gardner made it a nine-point game with 12 minutes left, but Virginia didn't make another field goal until more than seven minutes later and scored only two points during that stretch. 

The trend of missed layups continued for the Cavaliers and they also continued their recent disturbing habit of missed free throws as well, missing five consecutive foul shots at one point in the second half. Virginia was 5/11 from the charity stripe. It's essentially impossible to win a game when you leave a combined 40 points on the table on just missed free throws and layups. 

The Cavaliers made a few plays in the final couple of minutes in a last-ditch comeback effort, showing at the very least, that they had some fight in them. Armaan Franklin made a three and then a mid-range jumper to get back within six points with 21 seconds left, but Caleb Love sealed the game at the free throw line and North Carolina came away with a 71-63 win, UNC's first Quad 1 victory of the season and one that will go a long way towards helping the Tar Heels qualify for the NCAA Tournament. 

Jayden Gardner led Virginia with a 19-point, 12-rebound double-double and Armaan Franklin added 14 points, but attempted only two three-pointers. Kihei Clark had nine points and five assists and Reece Beekman recorded eight points, six assists, and four rebounds. That was not nearly enough to catch North Carolina, though, as four different Tar Heels reached double figures. Pete Nance had 22 points on 7/10 shooting and RJ Davis had 16 points and 10 rebounds for a double-double. Armando Bacot added 11 points and Caleb Love had 10 points. 

Florida State's buzzer-beating victory at Miami just a few minutes before tip-off of UVA's game at UNC gave Virginia a golden opportunity to get back in front of the race for the ACC regular season title and the No. 1 seed in the ACC Tournament. Instead, the Cavaliers continued to slide deeper into their slump that has many questioning what has happened to this UVA team that once looked like the undisputed best team in the ACC and a strong candidate for a run to the Final Four. 

Having lost its last two games, Virginia is now 21-6 overall and 13-5 in ACC play, as the Cavaliers slide down into a third-place tie in the ACC standings with Clemson, trailing Miami (14-5) and Pittsburgh (14-4). UVA will host Clemson on Tuesday at 7pm at John Paul Jones Arena. 

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