Chapel Hill, N.C. — It still wasn’t pretty, but perhaps for Wahoos it was slightly more bearable.
Though the Virginia men’s basketball team got off to a less auspicious first half than it did during the previous four games, the Cavaliers trailed by as many as 20 points in the second half, falling to the No. 4 Tar Heels Saturday 76-61.
Tar Heel junior point guard Ty Lawson played his second near-perfect game against the Cavaliers, finishing with ten points, nine assists and no turnovers. In two games against Virginia this season, Lawson’s line has been one of the best: 29 points, 18 assists and one turnover.
“That was one thousand percent Ty Lawson,” Virginia coach Dave Leitao said. “That has nothing really to do with Virginia. It has everything to do with his emergence as a great point guard.”
Senior forward Tyler Hansbrough also had a characteristic performance, finishing with a double-double of 15 points and 13 boards.
If the Cavaliers (7-12, 1-7 ACC) can find solace in anything from Saturday’s loss, it is that, for the first time in nearly a month, they were able to keep the game competitive in the first half compared to previous games. Leitao started the same unusual group of five he kept on the floor for nearly the entire second half of the preceding game against Boston College: junior guard Calvin Baker, sophomore guard Jeff Jones, freshman guard Sylven Landesberg, junior guard-forward Solomon Tat and freshman center Assane Sene. Virginia also kept the 3-2 zone look that had contributed to a strong second half against the Eagles, and the defense had similar success in the first half Saturday.
The Tar Heels (21-2, 7-2 ACC), who came into the afternoon averaging 91.4 points per contest, struggled to hit from the perimeter, mustering 24 points in the first 16 minutes as Virginia trailed by a point. It was the first time Virginia had kept a game close that deep into a game since Jan. 10 in a 78-75 loss against Virginia Tech.
“Coming in, I thought if we could slow them down — because that’s what really got us last time, they’re transition offense was superb — that we’d at least try to manage ourself [from] TV timeout to TV timeout,” Leitao said. “The zone did that initially; they missed a lot of open shots that they normally make.”
The struggling Virginia offense, however, once again never made it off the ground. The Cavaliers shot just 31.4 percent from the field and trailed by eight at the half, despite the strong start on the defensive end.
“Sometimes it looked like there were more than five [North Carolina] guys out there on [defense],” Leitao said. “What happens with good defensive teams, the opportunities that they give you, you’re not real comfortable with, so you end up maybe missing a point-blank shot, or something that you’re normally used to making.”
The Tar Heels’ found the creases in Virginia’s zone by the second half, however, and the threes started to fall. North Carolina opened the half with seven straight points to expand the lead to 40-25. Landesberg cut the deficit to 12 after the first media timeout, but the Tar Heels scored six more unanswered points to open up their biggest lead of 18. The margin would not dip below 15 until the waning minutes of regulation, after both squads had unloaded their benches.
“I said it to my staff somewhere during the first half, that the most important point of the game was gonna be the first five minutes of the second half,” Leitao said. “They came out and made a couple of quick shots on us ... We were stuck on 25 [points] for a while, so the combination of what they were doing on both ends of the floor made the difference.”
As Virginia continues to look for answers to its conference funk, the team also can find silver linings in a pair of individual performances. Jones had his most productive outing of the season, leading all Virginia scorers with 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including 3-of-5 from beyond the arc.
“My confidence has always been there,” Jones said. “I got the opportunity today, and I proved that I can do it.”
Landesberg also showed promising signs against a North Carolina team that held him to his worst game of the season in the previous matchup, when he shot one of nine for two points. After hitting a similar wall in the first half Saturday — making just two of 10 field goals — Landesberg hit 4-of-6 in the second and converted each of his two three-point tries for just his second and third threes in the conference season. He also added five assists and committed just one turnover.
“I’ve been working hard on my midrange game, and extending out to shoot threes,” Landesberg said. “I just showed a little bit of that today.”
Even after a loss, Leitao said such signs of growth are positive ones.
“I’ve got a few different things I’ve gotta make sure of, one of which is to keep the guys moving forward in terms of ... growing, and getting better, and understanding what it takes,” Leitao said. “When you do that, then from an overall standpoint, you get a win like South Florida beating Marquette, or games like that around the country that prove your point to be true.”
Notes
Senior forward Mamadi Diane did not play Saturday for the first time in his college career ... Jones’ 19-point performance was no surprise to Landesberg — “in practice, day-in and day-out, Jeff is the most consistent scorer,” he said ... Sophomore guard Mustapha Farrakhan and junior forward Jerome Meyinsse also did not make appearances. For Farrakhan, it was the first time he did not play since Dec. 20 against Auburn; for Meyinssee, the first occasion since Virginia’s season opener Nov. 16 against VMI ... Senior center Tunji Soroye made his ninth appearance of the season, and his 13 minutes were the most he’s played in a conference match; he finished with two points, three rebounds and two turnovers ... freshman center John Brandenburg appeared with 2:29 in regulation and had two steals and a block ... freshman point guard Sammy Zeglinski scored 11 points, the most since he had 14 Jan. 6 against Brown.
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