Carolina 79, Virginia 69

I think my sales professor summed it up best this morning when he described last night’s game as (paraphrasing) “Carolina played horrible but Virginia played worst.” So far this year, I have only attended one other basketball game and that was when UNC played an opponent I have never heard of before, but I can tell you the team I saw playing at the Dean E. Smith Center last night cannot qualify as the number one basketball team in the country. Cannot.

The game started out in the right direction (remember I am retelling this from the UVA perspective) with Virginia scoring the first basket and later scoring the first three-pointer of the evening. We were in the lead for the first twelve minutes of the game until UNC scored its first three-pointer of the evening. That was followed quickly by another basket and yet another three-pointer and within two minutes, Virginia’s seven point lead vanished and UNC took the lead for the first time of the evening. The remainder of the first half had the lead going back and forth between the two teams, with an average of 2-4 points separating them. The biggest cheer from the UNC crowd came in the last two seconds of the first half when UNC scored putting the team ahead by one point.

The second half was not nearly as exciting. We spent the first ten minutes mostly with UNC in the lead. At around seven minutes left on the clock it appeared that UNC was beginning to pull away but Virginia quickly brought it back to a five point deficit. It wasn’t until the last five minutes that UNC really began to “put it away.”

I remember noticing during last year’s game that UNC’s three-point shots were one of the things that put them over Virginia but those fantastic shooting skills were not evident last night. Virginia scored many more three-pointers than UNC did. The seats last night were in the upper level Row Y, which is the uppermost row of the entire stadium. Even though we were literally at sitting at the very top (the wall was behind me), I had no trouble seeing each and every play. Looking around the stadium, I saw insurgent groups of Virginia fans wearing our trademark orange embedded within the sea of Carolina blue.

As I was leaving the stadium last night with my tail between my legs, I couldn’t help thinking how great it would have been if Virginia had won. But hey, 79-69 is not bad. At least I didn't walking out of there feeling half as embarassed in my UVA jacket as I did last year.