#18 UVA led by as many as 19 in the second half, but had to hold off a late N.C. State charge in a 70-55 win in Raleigh on Saturday.
The win snaps a four-game losing streak for Virginia (19-9, 9-7 ACC).
The Cavs led 35-21 at the half, and pushed the margin to 43-24 two minutes into the second half. But State (15-15, 4-13 ACC) fought it down to eight, at 59-51, on a pair of free throws by Terry Henderson with 5:29 to go.
A London Perrantes three pushed the lead back to 11, and a Devon Hall layup made it 13 with 4:17 left, and it would not get back to single digits thereafter.
Perrantes had a nice bounceback game, scoring 16 on 5-of-9 shooting and dishing out 10 assists in 35 minutes.
Kyle Guy, who played two minutes in the overtime loss to Miami on Monday, led Virginia with 19 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the floor, and 5-of-7 shooting from three-point range.
Hall had 18 points on 5-of-8 shooting from the floor, and a team-high nine rebounds.
Isaiah Wilkins was limited to 19 minutes off the bench with flu-like symptoms before the game. Ty Jerome started in his place, and scored five points, had six rebounds and recorded four steals before fouling out after logging 23 minutes.
Marial Shayok, the team’s second-leading scorer coming in, was scoreless on 0-of-4 shooting with four turnovers in 12 minutes.
Virginia shot 48.9 percent (23-of-47) from the floor and was 11-of-16 (68.8 percent) from three-point range. Foul shooting was again an issue – the Cavs were just 13-of-22 (59.1 percent) from the line.
Dennis Smith Jr. had 13 points on 4-of-14 shooting to lead the Wolfpack. Smith had been averaging 18.9 points a game on 46.7 percent shooting from the field coming in.
State shot 32.1 percent from the field (18-of-56) and was just 7-of-27 (25.9 percent) from three-point range.
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