UNC women's basketball fall prey to Virginia Tech in upset

Allisha Gray’s calm-and-collectedness and Diamond DeShields’ fearlessness.

All season long, the North Carolina women’s basketball team’s freshman guard tandem has played with those contrasting styles, bringing them together to form one of the top scoring duos in the ACC.

The most defining aspect of the chemistry they’ve concocted?

When one struggles, the other picks up the slack.

But in UNC’s 50-47 loss to Virginia Tech Sunday, the body language of the team’s top-two scorers told it all.

Allisha Gray’s playful smiles faded into frustration and Diamond DeShields’ ice-cold demeanor that brings fear into her opponents’ eyes slowly melted.

Because against Virginia Tech (13-14, 3-11 ACC), the unthinkable, the unimaginable happened.

Both players failed to do what they do best.

The two Georgia natives entered the contest with the Hokies, who are tied for last in the ACC, having teamed up for 33 points a game.

But on Sunday, Virginia Tech broke out the clamps, holding the duo to 13 points combined and the entire No. 8 Tar Heel squad to its lowest points total of the season.

“It just wasn’t our day.” said sophomore forward Xylina McDaniel, who led UNC with 13 points. “It happens sometimes.”

With close losses to top ACC teams in Duke and N.C. State, heading into the matchup, Virginia Tech coach Dennis Wolff anticipated his team would come out strong against the Tar Heels (21-7, 9-5).

But even Wolff admitted he couldn’t prophesize the rough shooting afternoons that would plague both Gray and DeShields.

“We were just going to try and make them work for their baskets,” Wolff said. “They’ve shot the ball so well, so I think we did a pretty good job on both of them.”

Gray and DeShields combined to shoot 4-for-26 from the field, including 0-for-10 from 3-point range .

“They did do some stuff defensively that I thought was good against them. I’d rather not give that out — what I thought they did to stop them,” associate head coach Andrew Calder said while laughing.

Gray’s lone field goal came at the 10:17 mark in the second half, giving UNC a 38-36 lead.

But the Hokies answered, battling back to claim a three-point lead with six seconds left.

And though his leading scorer had struggled for nearly 40 minutes, Calder put the ball in DeShields’ hands.

The play? A simple isolation with the freedom to let it fly.

And as she dribbled the ball up the court and toed the 3-point line — where just weeks ago she’d made Duke and N.C. State pay with five deep balls in each game — DeShields’ trademark look of ferocity, her swag, reappeared.

But when the ball hit the rim and rolled off, all she could do was slump her shoulders and drop her head, soon joined by Gray, whose brief look of hope suddenly vanished with the sound of the buzzer.

sports@dailytarheel.com