One quibble from the 61-49 UVA win over defending national champ North Carolina: the Heels, as you would expect, dominated the offensive glass, snaring 48.7 percent of their misses, which, yeah, yikes.
But even that huge edge didn’t matter much, if anything.
Even with 19 offensive rebounds, Carolina had just a 12-7 edge in second-chance points on Virginia, which dominated every other statistical category.
Consider: a 25-3 gap in points off turnovers, 15-0 in the first half, which saw Virginia race out to three breakaway dunks off turnovers.
More on the turnovers: North Carolina had 60 possessions on the afternoon. Nineteen of them, 31.7 percent, ended with the Tar Heels turning the ball over, and 11 of them, 18.3 percent, led directly to Virginia buckets.
We’ll let those nuggets sink in.
Back to it: UNC finished 29.6 percent from the field, missing its last nine shots, scoring just one point in the final 7:11, after having cut the Virginia lead to six at that point.
And: Luke Maye, who had averaged 18.1 points on 51 percent shooting from the floor and 45.5 percent shooting from three-point range, finished with six points, on 2-of-10 shooting from the floor, in 32 minutes, and finished his day so frustrated that he airballed a free throw with 3:33 to go.
Efficiency stuff: North Carolina scored .817 points per possession. Coming into the game, Carolina had scored 1.15 points per possession, 24th-best nationally. That’s a 28.9 percent drop. Which is nice, when you can make it happen.
And finally: nine UNC players attempted a shot in the game. Only one, Garrison Brooks, shot 50 percent or better from the field. Brooks, the starting center, finished 1-of-2 from the floor in 17 minutes.
That was a beatdown.
Story by Chris Graham
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