CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.
North Carolina arrived at Virginia on Saturday playing as well as it had, perhaps, in more than a month and a half, and the Tar Heels were anxious to prove that they'd put their mid-February slump in the past.
UNC's 79-74 defeat at John Paul Jones Arena, though, proved the seventh-ranked Tar Heels still have a ways to go to become the team they can believe they can be. In what was a measuring stick game – one between two top-10 teams with grand postseason aspirations – UNC came up just short.
It wasn't that UNC played poorly, necessarily.