CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Good defense, Virginia men's basketball coach Dave Leitao contends, generally leads to good offense.

That wasn't the case Wednesday night.

UVa had lengthy scoring droughts at the end of both halves and was unable to pull off an upset of No. 1-ranked North Carolina, which shot 37.9 percent in a 79-69 victory at the Dean Smith Center.

If rebounding can be considered to be defense, however, maybe Virginia's defense wasn't so outstanding.

The Cavaliers (9-5 overall, 1-1 ACC) gave up 21 offensive rebounds on a night when they absorbed their worst beating on the boards this season, 47-34.

At game time, Carolina (15-1, 2-0) was ranked third out of 119 Division I teams in rebounding, with an average differential of 11.7. Virginia had been 17th, with an average differential of 8.4.

"Rebounding is something that you've got to do," Leitao said. "They're [the Tar Heels] very good. They're the No. 1 rebounding team in the league. That's what the stats tell me. That's what the tape tells me. But, you've got to battle them and I don't think we battled them."

Virginia had lost 61 of its previous 66 games in Chapel Hill, where the Tar Heels had routed the Cavaliers 99-54 last March. But Virginia came out flying and was on a 100-point pace when it took a 27-19 lead on a three-point play by Sean Singletary with 9:51 left in the half.

The Cavaliers failed to score on eight straight possessions late in the first half and on nine consecutive possessions in the second half.

Earlier in the second half, Virginia had committed eight turnovers during a 6 minute, 35 second span -- four by Singletary. He had been averaging fewer than three turnovers a game.

"This is the ACC," Singletary said. "You've got to be a lot stronger with the ball. We beat ourselves. I struggled, definitely. Coach [Roy] Williams did a good job of pressuring me, of getting fresh guys on me and frustrating me.""

By Leitao's count, Carolina used four point guards against Singletary.

"What we needed was somebody to take some of the pressure off of him," Leitao said. "He kept forcing it and he missed a couple of guys, but we didn't have the kind of confidence offensively that would allow him to share the ball with everybody. We needed more people to make more plays."

"We wore down mentally and they never wore down mentally, and a lot of that has to do with substitutions. We ask so much out of Sean and J.R. [Reynolds]. It's hard to ask them to be crisp as you need them in an environment like this."

Reynolds had a team-leading 15 points, a season-high seven assists and only two turnovers in 35 minutes. Singletary and Mamadi Diane had 14 apiece, and the Cavaliers got a season-high 10 points from Lauris Mikalauskas.

"He played with energy, he got some finishes and played better defense," Leitao said, "but he played 25 minutes and got two rebounds. All of us, and I'm just not picking on him, have got to do a better job on the backboards.

"You can't give up 21 offensive rebounds and say, 'Oh, by the way, we should have won the game."

Senior post Jason Cain returned to the starting lineup after three games of spot duty and finished with eight points and eight rebounds in 28 minutes.

Cain attributed the rebounding discrepancy "to a little bit of everything," he said. "They're deep, they're athletic, they're strong. They send four or five people to the glass at a time. There were a lot of long rebounds today."

The loss dropped the Cavaliers to 3-13 on the road during Leitao's two seasons, with the ACC counting a 59-52 victory over Division II Puerto Rico-Mayaguez as a road win because the Tarzans were the host team for the San Juan Shootout.

UVa will attempt to win its second ACC road win of the Leitao era when it ventures to Boston College for a 2 p.m. Saturday matchup.

The Eagles (11-4, 3-0) boast the ACC's leading rebounder in senior Jared Dudley, but are not as deep as Carolina.

"It's good to see that our team's really turned the page in terms of chemistry," Singletary said. "We were lacking that the whole year. Even last year, we didn't really have chemistry. We had a lot of chemistry today. We stuck together for the most part and we're really excited about that going into Saturday."