5 Virginia Tech takeaways from loss at North Carolina

Going on the road to 7th-ranked North Carolina was not going to be an easy task for the Virginia Tech men's basketball team on Saturday afternoon. The Hokies made it more difficult on themselves than they needed to.

Virginia Tech allowed 14 offensive rebounds and 54 points in the paint and in the end, they had no answer for the Tar Heels' height and talent in suffering another ACC loss on the road. Here are some takeaways after the Hokies fell to 14-11 overall and 6-8 in the ACC.

• Four of North Carolina's starters finished in double figures with Armando Bacot leading the way with 25 points and 12 rebounds. Harrison Ingram had 12 points and 17 rebounds. RJ Davis had 20 points and Cormac Ryan added 16 and knocked down four 3-pointers. Just too much offensive talent for Mike Young's team to defend as they can hurt you in different ways.
• Virginia Tech hung around, but never really threatened the Tar Heels in the second half. The deficit stayed around 10-15 points and the couple of times that they cut it under 10 points and even to seven, they couldn't get a stop defensively or gave up an offensive rebound and UNC made them pay.
• MJ Collins paced the Hokies with 18 points and was 7-for-15 from the field in 39 minutes. Hunter Cattoor had 11 points and Sean Pedulla had 10 and five assists. Lynn Kidd had 11 points but grabbed just two rebounds. They needed more rebounds from him, especially on the defensive end.
• You don't lose a lot of games when you score 81 points, but you lose games when you score 81 points when you allow the opposing team to shoot 51% from the field and 23 free throws. Virginia Tech only turned the ball over six times, but allowing 14 offensive rebounds is not a good recipe for success on the road against a Top 10 team.
• Tyler Nickel, who transferred to Virginia Tech from North Carolina had 14 points, hit four of six 3-pointers, and had three blocks. Mylyjael Poteat had 15 points and eight rebounds off the bench as well.

There is very little time to recover from this one for the Hokies as they host Virginia Monday night at Cassel Coliseum in the second Commonwealth Clash this winter. Tech lost the first game in Charlottesville by eight points last month.