— It's no secret teams study film of their next opponent, but North Carolina's Joel Berry turned to No. 2 Virginia's win versus Clemson as part of his preparation for the No. 19 Tar Heels' game against Pittsburgh as he tried to offer his teammates an example of how to fix their three-point defensive woes.

"Virginia is one of the best defensive teams in the nation," Berry said after the Tar Heels beat the Panthers 96-56. "I watched one of their games (Satur)day -- against Clemson. I recorded a couple of them on my phone and put them in our group chat and told (the guys), 'This is how we have to play the screen on ball and this is how our defense has to be.'

"I think guys saw that and took that out onto the court."

In UNC's (17-7, 6-5 ACC) three consecutive losses before facing the ACC's worst team and worst three-point shooting team, Roy Williams' guys let Virginia Tech, NC State and Clemson sink a collective 46.7 percent of their shots from behind the arc (42 of 90 total shots).

"It's not anything significant, it's just a little over-helping," the Tar Heel senior said. "When they come off a screen and roll, the wrong guys are helping on the tag. If the ball is coming your way, you don't want to leave and tag and try to have to get (back) out to the three-point shot. That's just a straight line pass right into the guy's pocket."

That was one of the things UNC tried to clean up against Pitt, but Kevin Stallings' team sank 8 of 14 threes in the first half. The 57.1 percent first-half mark is well above the team's 32.5 percent average from the three coming into the game and Williams said simply, "We needed to do a better job guarding the three and they made five of their first seven baskets for three.

The Wahoos (22-1, 11-0 ACC) probably wouldn't like being the comparison for the first-half three-point mark the Panthers put up against the Tar Heels, but Berry believes the team did do a better job of not helping from the strong side in the second half versus Pitt. The visitors finished with a more normal 10 of 30 three-point mark.

The tendency of defenders helping off the wrong side, not the weak side, is perhaps a mixture of youth Berry says, but it's more generally something he feels the entire team needs to work on but the younger players in particular are a group Berry believes benefit from watching that defense execute so well -- call it leading by giving an example.

"I think those videos I put in (the chat) helped the big men out," he said.

Virginia is 4-3 versus UNC in Berry's time at Carolina with the teams splitting two games a season each of the last three years and winning the only meeting so far this season. But the NCAA's reigning Most Outstanding Player has no problem pointing out why he's using the conference foe to show the standard now, even if the piece of play that he hopes his team emulates the most isn't an outright replication of Tony Bennett's marquee 'Pack Line,' defense.

"They proven they're one of the best defensive teams, they just force you into bad shots," he said. "We want to play the screen on ball like they do, i just tried to give our guys that example. We want to be like them defensively, it doesn't hurt to scout a team.

"It doesn't hurt me saying I want to be like them defensively because they're winning and that's what has them second in the nation. I want to win as well."

Any coincidence in Berry basing his defensive learning on the ACC team that recently beat UNC's next opponent, the ACC's second-best three-point shooting team, Duke?

"Exactly," Berry said. "It's all about being a student of the game, seeing what they did against Duke and just trying to do the same thing."