North Carolina coach Hubert Davis chose to downplay the significance of his team's Saturday showdown at No. 2 Duke following the Tar Heels' dispiriting 73-65 loss at Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. The defeat was UNC's third in its last four games and raises the stakes of the upcoming rivalry game for a team that is scrambling to assemble an NCAA Tournament resume.

And then the final minutes, too, when UNC went more than three minutes without a point, missed 10 of their final 11 attempts from the field and allowed the Panthers to score the final nine points, which were part of a larger 14-2 run over the final five-plus minutes.

For UNC, the late collapse Tuesday night at Pitt was “kind of like the same movie over and over again,” RJ Davis said. The Tar Heels are becoming familiar with an uncomfortable new reality.