UNC volleyball falls to Virginia as head coach Joe Sagula unable to capture 800th win

With the struggling Virginia Cavaliers in town, Sunday looked like a good day for the North Carolina volleyball team to check a couple of boxes at once. 

That four-game losing streak? A good home performance could have ended that. A win also would have made Tar Heel head coach Joe Sagula, a 38-season coaching veteran, a member of the 800-win club. 

Instead, UNC lost in straight sets to the Cavaliers (25-16, 25-12, 25-22), looking outmatched against a Virginia team that entered Sunday having lost five of its six road matches. 

Now losers of their last five, the Tar Heels (5-12, 1-7 ACC) need a win more than ever, but things will only get trickier from here. 

After going 0-2 at home this weekend against Pittsburgh and Virginia, four road matches now await UNC. While three of those games come against teams with losing conference records (Boston College, Georgia Tech and Clemson), UNC enters the upcoming road trip 1-5 away from home. 

For that reason, Sunday’s poor performance seems like a missed opportunity for the Tar Heels. 

“We’ve got our hands full,” Sagula said. “It’s not going to get any easier. It’s just one of those years where we’ve kind of buried ourselves in a hole and it’s going to be tough to get out of.”

UNC’s performance against the Cavaliers illustrated why Sagula feels that way. 

Both teams entered Sunday’s match in the cellar of the league standings, but Virginia looked a class above the Tar Heels. 

That’s not to say UNC didn’t look capable at times, however. In the first set, Sagula’s team led 10-9 before collapsing down the stretch. After falling behind two games to none, UNC jumped out to a 14-7 advantage in the third set but couldn’t salvage that frame, either. Instead, the Tar Heels allowed the Cavaliers to finish on an 18-8 run to earn a straight-set win. 

In between the the first and third games was a second set in which UNC looked stunned by the Cavaliers’ prowess. At one point in the second frame, Virginia won 14 of 16 points. 

Watching from the sidelines, Sagula was most concerned with the way his players were unable to respond. 

“We had no fight in us,” Sagula said. “We had no competitiveness. It’s just been … gone. When it got tough, Virginia raised their level, played hard, took good plays, and we just disappeared.” 

This is not a new occurrence for the Tar Heels, whose inability to carry over lessons learned in practice to game day has perplexed the coaching staff. In particular, UNC’s struggles with fighting through adversity or tough moments in matches is what’s frustrating assistant coach Mike Schall. 

“What we’re working on is getting better at working through the hard spots,” Schall said. “There’s no easy way to get better at it other than working through the hard spots. And, you know, tonight I think the disappointment was that we didn't appear like we were ready to play.” 

With a trip to face Syracuse, 10-6 and 6-2 in the ACC, on the horizon, the Tar Heels should get more opportunities to work on persevering through “the hard spots.” 

Against Virginia, Sagula turned to lesser-used players like first-years Hadden LaGarde and Annabelle Archer in an attempt to find something else that might work. 

LaGarde, an outside hitter who’s only been practicing for two weeks after recovering from a muscle pull in her stomach, shined in her season debut, recording team-highs in kills (six) and hitting percentage (.600). 

“Fantastic. I thought she came in very relaxed and did exactly what we wanted,” Sagula said. “I thought that she’s waited her time and did what we needed, which was simply to take good, aggressive swings.” 

LaGarde and other UNC players were not made available to meet with the media following the match. 

A few stretches of good play and a strong showing from LaGarde in her debut couldn’t mask the general lack of competitiveness that’s bothering Sagula. 

The coach sitting on 799 career wins thinks he needs to do better. 

“I’m doing a terrible job, and I need to do a better job as a coach for them,” Sagula said. 

@brennan_doherty

@DTHSports | sports@dailytarheel.com