North Carolina vs Virginia Prediction, Picks & Odds for Tonight’s College Basketball Game

It’s as classic of an ACC battle as you can get when North Carolina hits the road to face Virginia.

It’s been a great start to the season for the Cavs but its undefeated January has been particularly impressive. In fact, after road wins against Louisville and SMU, if you isolated just this month’s numbers, UVA would be the number one team in the country per Torvik.

They’ll look to continue rolling against a talented Tar Heels team that has lost two of its last three after a wayward West Coast trip.

Advertisement

I break it all down in my North Carolina vs. Virginia predictions and college basketball picks for Saturday, January 24.

North Carolina vs Virginia prediction

North Carolina vs Virginia best bet: Virginia -6.5 (-115)

My model projects Virginia -8, making this 1.5 points of value on the Cavaliers at home. It’s easily my best bet on this game as a consequence.

Virginia’s defense will disrupt everything UNC wants to do offensively. That’s the real story here.
As you’d expect, UNC has leaned heavily on star freshman Caleb Wilson this season with direct post-ups.

But the Virginia defense has been elite on the interior, holding opponents to just .53 points per possession on post-ups this season. 

Advertisement

Henri Veesaar provides secondary scoring in the Big Cut & Roll game (1.44 points per possession, a truly elite threat), but those opportunities evaporate against the pack-line as well.

North Carolina will likely take the traditional UNC approach of speeding this up as much as possible but I’m dubious on how many transition opportunities they’ll create.

Virginia is gettable there but just like Louisville found out a week ago, it’s hard to get those opportunities against the Cavs. Turnovers are also a story here as a 13% turnover rate is never good when going on the road in the ACC.

Offensively, Virginia attacks UNC’s glaring weakness: dribble jumpers. The Tar Heels defend that dribble creation at just 0.95 PPP allowed (14th percentile)….

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/north-carolina-vs-virginia-prediction-160900865.html

Author :

Publish date : 2026-01-24 16:09:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.