By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
RALEIGH, N.C. — The University of Virginia men’s basketball team got back to Charlottesville on Saturday night, closing the book on its latest road trip. Another one looms, and in six days the Cavaliers will board their buses again and head back to North Carolina, this time for a game against Wake Forest in Winston-Salem.
With no midweek game on the schedule, head coach Tony Bennett and his staff have ample time to examine what went right and what went wrong in UVA’s 76-60 loss to ACC rival NC State at PNC Arena.
In each of the Wahoos’ first two road games of the season, horrendous starts put them in holes out of which they were unable to climb. Virginia lost 77-54 at Memphis and 76-54 at Notre Dame.
The Hoos’ game in Raleigh unfolded differently Saturday afternoon. With 7:25 left in the first half, Virginia (11-4 overall, 2-2 ACC) led the Wolfpack by four.
“We talked about getting off to a better start, and I thought there was some progress in that first 15 minutes or wherever it was,” Bennett said. “So I thought we were sound, we were tough, took care of the ball, made it a little more difficult on them to get some shots.”
Then NC State freshman Dennis Parker Jr. hit a desperation 3-pointer from near midcourt as the shot clock expired, and everything changed.
“That was certainly a momentum swing,” Bennett said. “I’m not going to say that if he wouldn’t have made that, it would have been a different story, but you felt the swing and then you could see it, you could feel it a little bit, because it happened quick.”
Parker’s shot awakened not only his team, but the home fans in the crowd of 14,821. Virginia turned the ball over at the other end, and State scored to take a 20-19 lead. UVA went up 21-20 on a jumper by swingman Andrew Rohde, but its lead proved fleeting. NC State went into intermission on a 15-7 run, scored the first six points of the second half and wasn’t seriously threatened thereafter. The Pack led by 21 with five minutes to play.
“We’ve just got to figure out on the road how we can stick together,” said UVA forward Ryan Dunn, who finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and two blocked shots.
The 16 points were a career high for the 6-foot-8 Dunn, and the rebounds and blocks were team highs Saturday.
The Cavaliers, 9-0 at John Paul Jones Arena this season, are 0-3 on the road and 2-1 at neutral sites. Their other defeat was a 24-point…