A game effort, but no payoff

CHAPEL HILL, N.C.

As close as Virginia played third-ranked North Carolina in the first half on Saturday, Cavaliers’ coach Dave Leitao knew there was absolutely no margin for error.

In fact, late in the half Leitao turned to his assistant coaches and told them the key to the game would be the first five minutes of the second half. Grasping for anything that would shake Virginia out of a horrible losing slump, Leitao had played more zone defense, spread his offense, shook up his starting lineup, you name it.

However, after battling the Tar Heels to an eight-point margin the first 20 minutes, reality set in quickly to open the second half.

A lid on the basket

“We were stuck on 25 [points] for a while,” Leitao said of the Cavaliers, a prohibitive underdog that ended up trailing by 24 points in the second stanza before losing 76-61.

The Cavaliers suffered a four-minute drought to open the half, their longest scoreless stretch of the entire game, and watched in horror as Carolina sliced and diced its way to an insurmountable lead.

In a way, the game was two programs passing by one another headed in different directions.

North Carolina, 21-2, won its seventh straight game and is tied for first place in the ACC with Duke.

Virginia, 7-12, lost its seventh straight and continued to linger in last place.

While Leitao is not into moral victories, he had to be pleased that he saw some fight from his team. Finishing the first half of the ACC season at 1-7, it would have been easy for the Cavaliers to get blown out of the Dean Dome by an opponent comfortable with running the floor and running up the score.

Slow it down

The game plan was to slow UNC’s rhythm on offense, try the Tar Heels’ patience, and play sticky defense. The strategy worked for a while until Carolina flexed its muscles and felt the roar of an unsatisfied Roy Williams in the UNC locker room during the break.

“It was a grind-it-out type of game, and that’s something we needed to have today,” said Tar Heels guard Wayne Ellington, who finished as the game’s top scorer with 20 points. “All games aren’t won the pretty way.”

At least the Cavaliers kept it interesting past halftime. In recent ACC outings, they’ve stumbled out of the blocks and dug themselves into too deep a hole to escape no matter how inspired they played in the second half.

In fact, this was a much better performance by UVa than its first encounter with Carolina back in Charlottesville on Jan. 15, when the Heels rolled to a 50-36 lead at intermission en route to an 83-61 score.

That was star Cavaliers freshman Sylven Landesberg’s worst game, when he scored a mere two points in a 1 of 9 shooting performance. Saturday, amidst a blue heaven crowd of 20,879 partisans, including Naismith Hall of Famers Dean Smith, James Worthy, Billy Cunningham and Bob McAdoo, Landesberg delivered more of a typical performance: 16 points, 6 of 16 from the field.

He had some help from Jeff Jones, who contributed 19, but as usual, the lack of a balanced attack by the Wahoos left them woefully in Carolina’s dust.

Williams, also a Hall of Famer, was more concerned about how to lift his team out of a first-half shooting slump (11 of 33) than posing for a photograph with his celebrated guests before going in and lighting up the Tar Heels’ locker room.

“It was an unusual game because in the first half it was like pulling teeth,” Williams said. “We could not get a shot to go in, yet I thought we were doing well on the defensive end.”

Carolina, which next plays its archest rival Duke in a Tobacco Road showdown on Wednesday night in Durham, will continue to race toward postseason glory.

Virginia, which was described by a Raleigh columnist as “pitiful” after melting down at Duke a week ago, is bailing as furiously as it can in an attempt to not sink into oblivion. With eight conference games remaining — none of which they will likely be favored to win — and postseason unthinkable at this point, Leitao is desperately searching for a silver lining.

Chapel Hill, where UVa’s futility has reached epic proportions over the decades (the Cavaliers have a record of 5 wins and 61 losses all-time in this town), is an unlikely place for Leitao to discover any encouragement, but may just have done just that on Saturday.

He started this game with the same lineup he finished the last one, Landesberg, Jones, sparingly-used Solomon Tat, Assane Sene and Calvin Baker.

If his aim was to send a message to his team, he squarely hit his target.

“I can’t blame him for making a change ... we had lost six in a row,” said formerly starting point guard Sammy Zeglinski, who was spotted diving on the floor for loose balls and hustling down court with a fury. “When I got in today, I wanted to play hard.”

So far, the zone has been effective over stretches because the Cavaliers are mobile enough to run at the shooters quickly. On the other hand, spreading the offense at times gives Landesberg more options to attack the basket and he’s their best weapon.

Leitao would prefer not to play Landesberg at the point, but he’s better than anyone else on the roster at coming off screens and attacking the basket, making something happen. If the coach had his way, he would mix up his defenses from some pressure, to man-to-man, to zone, but his team hasn’t been able to live up to his expectations in that department.

“I think we made progress today,” Landesberg said optimistically.

Zeglinski, who contributed 11 points and five rebounds off the bench, couldn’t deny that the losing is getting old.

“It’s no fun,” he said of the seven-game streak. “But, we want to continue to get better. Today we gave it all we had.”

Once again, all they had was not enough.