Senior guard Malcolm Brogdon scored eight of his game-high 26 points in the first 4:31 of Saturday night's showdown, as No. 3 UVa refused to let No. 7 North Carolina back in it late and held on for 79-74 win.
With the victory, the Cavaliers (22-6, 11-5 ACC) kept themselves alive in the conference's regular season title race and the hunt for a third-straight crown.
But on this night, it was about the play of Brogdon, who shot 9-for-16 from the field, including a trio of 3-pointers and a perfect 5-for-5 from the free-throw line, to help secure the win.
"He's been terrific most all of conference play," head coach Tony Bennett said of his superstar. "Really most all of his career, I should say. He was efficient as ever.
"He made the tough plays," Bennett added. "He certainly gets guarded hard. He also defends hards. He was real steady in a game that was important and had implications for a lot of things. I was excited to see our balance and how we responded. I was thinking about Malcolm a lot today. There was a lot of stuff and a lot of things [going on]. How he handled it was great."
Said North Carolina's Roy Williams, "Malcolm in the first half was as good of a performance against us this season, maybe in several years."
In addition to his points, Brogdon added 6 rebounds and 3 assists to button up another stellar performance against one of the three Triangle squads. And with that sort of effort, he may have sewn up the race for ACC Player of the Year, especially considering UNC's Brice Johnson finished with 12 points but had five turnovers, none bigger than the defensive rebound that slipped from his grasp with 36 seconds left to play and his team down only five.
After suffering a concussion in Virginia's loss Monday night at Miami, sophomore forward Isaiah Wilkins was iffy to play but he got UVa started offensively with the team's first basket with 18:11 left in the first half. And then Brogdon got going.
UVa got the lead after the Atlanta native hit a 3-pointer and then cashed in a pair of free throws with 17:10 left in the opening half. Aside from a 13-second stint about four minutes later, the Cavaliers led the rest of the way.
In fact, had it not been for Joel Berry's four first-half 3-pointers, the Tar Heels (23-6, 12-4) might not have been in it by intermission. Instead, UVa led by only a single possession after Wilkins' bucket with 0.5 seconds left.
Johnson got going to start the second, scoring Carolina's first six points. But from the 17:17 mark on, he was held scoreless and turned the ball over three times.
Meanwhile, the Wahoos were the ones that managed to control the offensive glass, turning 13 boards on that end of the floor into 14 second-chance points and outscored the Heels 32 to 28 in the paint.
Along with Brogdon, UVa got 12 points from junior point guard London Perrantes, 11 from Devon Hall, and 15 points and a game-high 9 rebounds from Anthony Gill, a bit of a bounce-back game for the senior forward. He scored in double figures in 22 games to start the season and then in the next two after scoring just four at Pitt. But in UVa's win over NC State last week he had 6 points on 3-for-8 shooting and then had six again (on 3-for-9 shooting) in the loss in Coral Gables.
Needless to say, a near double-double was what the team was looking for from the North Carolina native.
"You saw those guys and how long and athletic they are," Bennett said of Gill's matchup against the UNC bigs. "He competed hard. He got on the glass a couple of times and made some plays. We needed it all. That's what I like to see."
Virginia, which went 18-for-21 at the free-throw line, held UNC off in large part because of its efficiency at the stripe. Over the game's final minute, clinging to a six-point lead, the Hoos made six of nine at the line and the Tar Heels got within a single possession for roughly 1.2 seconds.
"I thought the biggest factor in the game to me was that they played with a high level of intensity on both offense and defense,” Williams said. “I think they were the actors and we were the reactors all night.”
