Jay Bilas calls North Carolina game vs. No. 6 Virginia a 'must win' for Tar Heels

North Carolina has a lot at stake against No. 6 Virginia, according to ESPN’s Jay Bilas.

The Tar Heels improved to 17-11 on the season with a road win over Notre Dame Wednesday but they have to keep it going. Last year’s runner ups were the preseason No. 1 but are currently unranked.

Bilas broke it down Saturday morning on SportsCenter and put a lot of pressure on North Carolina to pull off an ACC upset.

“Must win,” Bilas said when he described North Carolina’s game against Virginia. “You hate to say ‘must win’ in college basketball but for North Carolina, this is a must win game. North Carolina has to beat Virginia and they have to beat Duke and the last game of the regular season in order to feel like they’ve got a legitimate shot to get in the tournament without having to win the ACC championship (for) the automatic bid.”

Fellow ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg agreed with Bilas and actually took it a step further.

“Carolina has got to defend, look Virginia struggled to score,” Greenberg said. “If Carolina can stay in its stance and defend and get stops, they can get out in transition, maybe play ahead of that Virginia defense and I agree with Jay, flat out they have to win this game. They don’t win this game, they’re playing for seeding in the NIT.”

The second half against Notre Dame was key for North Carolina. Head coach Hubert Davis talked about the energy surge for his team.

“We played harder,” Davis said. “Energy, effort, passion. Obviously, we rebounded the ball extremely well. I thought defensively we were really good. I thought in the second half we took care of the basketball. We had zero assists and eight turnovers in the first half. Second half, we only had one turnover and eight assists. I thought that was huge. Then at the end of the day, guys are just gonna have to step up and make plays. Armando (Bacot), RJ (Davis), Caleb (Love), Leaky (Black), Pete (Nance), all of them on both ends of the floor made numerous plays to give us a chance to win.”

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That same energy will be needed against the Cavaliers. North Carolina and No. 6 Virginia square off in Chapel Hill Saturday at 6:00 p.m. ET.