‘Little things’ doom UNC men's basketball in loss

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The visitors’ locker room in John Paul Jones Arena is mostly empty. There are walls of navy blue lockers, plenty of small gray floor tiles.

Just not many people — Joel Berry is one of the few still hanging around. He’s fussing with his necktie, only looking up to answer a question.

What happened?

“I mean, it’s been happening to us all season — especially the games that we’ve lost that were really close. We weren’t dictating what we wanted them to do. We were just reacting all night, and they took advantage of that.”

But it was more than turnovers that doomed the No. 7 North Carolina men’s basketball team Saturday night. Giveaways, missed free throws, errant passes — all those little things added up to a 79-74 win for No. 3 Virginia.

There’s Brice Johnson too, getting dressed in the corner — so Brice, what needs to change?

“Just not do those things,” he said.

“Play better. Play harder. Not let guys run us down and take it from behind. Just do all the little things and not let them do those little things to beat us.”

That’s easier said than done.

Consider all the things the Tar Heels did do against UVa. — a career-high 21 points for Berry, nearly 50 percent shooting as a team, out-rebounding one of the best rebounding teams in the nation. And they still lost.

It must be the little things, then. The 13 turnovers, five of them Johnson’s. The six missed free throws, in a game decided by five points.

And then there’s the other moments, the plays that got away. Those inexplicable moments that swing the momentum — and the game — for one team or another.

One stands out:

There’s about 11 and a half minutes left in the game. Theo Pinson passes the ball to Johnson, his back to the basket. He corrals the pass, and everything seems normal.

But two guys swarm him, sprinting over to double-team UNC’s leading scorer. Trap, trap. Force a mistake.

Brice’s eyes open wide, looking somewhere — anywhere, really — for help. He sees something behind him. And then?

“He threw it in the seventeenth row of the stands,” Coach Roy Williams said later. “It’s all those little things that made them end up with more points than we did.”

Johnson and Berry leave the locker room. Justin Jackson’s the only one left.

He might not have turned the ball over like his teammates, but he still bears some of the blame. Everyone does. It was a total team effort, you could say, or maybe a lack thereof.

So Justin, all those free throws?

“You know, we just missed them. I know I missed one, which was the front of a one-and-one.”

He’s buttoning the sleeves on his shirt.

“Those are free. We gotta take advantage of things like that.”

And then he leaves, too. Williams just finished next door, but reporters are still trickling out as his press conference winds down.

A question isn’t necessary this time — he’s going on his own.

“Do I want us to play harder, with more intensity and not have somebody pick up every loose ball and get every offensive rebound?”

All he does is shrug. And then he leaves, too.

@BrendanRMarks

sports@dailytarheel.com