The inflating balloon of Virginia basketball was punctured on Saturday afternoon in the Dean Dome. North Carolina shot a rocket through Virginia’s balloon, winning by a score of 74-58 and snapping Virginia’s two-game ACC road win streak.
Halftime arrived with Virginia firmly in the game, trailing by only 6 points. But Carolina grabbed the game by the throat in the second period, wringing Virginia’s neck until the faltering Wahoos were too deep in debt to recover.
It was the sort of game where everything went right for one team and nothing did for the other. While it certainly puts a damper on Virginia’s 2022 revival, it will hopefully be proven an aberration. Here are three takeaways.
UNC’s athleticism too much for Virginia
Virginia’s demise was largely due to one player: UNC’s Armando Bacot. The 6’10”, 240-pound junior dominated Virginia. He scored 29 points and muscled his way to 21 rebounds, 9 of which came on the offensive end. The Hoos simply had no answer for Bacot.
Bacot is just one player on a roster that features a number of athletic players. In many ways, this game was similar to last season’s blowout loss at Florida State. That FSU team was long, with a laundry list of athletic players. The makeup of last year’s Virginia team was different than this year’s, but both teams were manhandled by more athletic teams.
Virginia simply couldn’t grab a board or keep up with the athleticism populating the opposing roster.
Francisco Caffaro is a big, strong guy. Kadin Shedrick is a big, strong, athletic guy. Bacot is a big, strong, athletic guy with incredible skill around the basket. Virginia was also hurt by Brady Manek, whose ability to knock down threes stretched the floor for the Heels.
Mismatches were often summoned by the Tar Heels, with Shedrick ending up on Love and Franklin on Bacot, among others. Credit to Hubert Davis for scheming up a way of getting his players into the matchups he wanted.
Virginia played poorly, there’s no denying it. The Hoos didn’t look like a good team. But the defeat and its margin are partly products of the fact that Virginia does not match up well with Carolina.
Gardner needs more of the ball
Bacot is UNC’s best player; he shot the ball 18 times. Jayden Gardner is Virginia’s best player; he shot the ball only 10 times. Kihei Clark and Reece Beekman took more shots than Gardner (Beekman, it should be noted, played a really solid game), and Armaan Franklin took the same number.
Ten shots is not an insignificant number, and UNC made a concerted effort to deny Gardner good looks, but Virginia’s undisputed best offensive player needs to see more of the ball. Some of the offense Virginia was running seemed engineered to provide looks for the centers and the guards, when instead the offense should have focused on feeding Gardner.
In the 2019-20 season, Virginia had a similar problem. Mamadi Diakite should have touched the ball on every single possession, and didn’t. By the end of the season, he was taking more shots and getting the ball in better positions, and unsurprisingly Virginia benefited because of it.
The same should happen with Gardner.
This is not as bad as it appears
Bad games happen. As already discussed, the Hoos lost largely because of North Carolina’s athleticism and because of Bacot’s explosion. Virginia was also whistled for 14 fouls and Carolina for only 8, which is a notable disparity that should be mentioned, if not blamed as the cause of defeat.
Most teams simply aren’t as athletic as Carolina. Virginia Tech, for instance, is certainly not. That’s who the Hoos will face next, on Wednesday at JPJ. There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned Hokie-beating to bolster a team.
This loss is a setback, but if Virginia stays the course things should turn out fine
Image – Virginia Athletics