BY BRIANA GORMAN

bgorman@heraldsun.com; 419-6668

CHAPEL HILL — After a disappointing loss to Georgia Tech on Saturday, North Carolina began turning its focus to its next opponent, Virginia, on Monday.

But even as the Tar Heels answered questions about the Cavaliers, the 24-7 loss to Georgia Tech still was in the back of their minds.

UNC might be playing Virginia this week, but the Tar Heels will be using their first defeat of the season as motivation against the Cavaliers.

“A lot of the guys on the team kind of have a bad taste in their mouths,” UNC quarterback T.J. Yates said. “The expectations for ourselves as a team going into this season, we didn’t see ourselves losing so early, so a lot of guys are pretty angry, pretty [ticked] off, and I think that’s going to help us.”

UNC’s offense had its worst performance of the season against the Yellow Jackets, and it was the fewest points scored by the Tar Heels under Coach Butch Davis. In Monday’s interviews, Yates and running back Shaun Draughn each took part of the blame for the anemic output.

Yates missed easy passes and never got in a rhythm, and Draughn said he missed some reads in the back field.

“I performed bad,” said Draughn, who finished with 26 rushing yards on six carries. “I take the blame for myself. I can’t speak for everybody else, but I know I can play better than what I did.”

The Tar Heels’ challenge this week will be to correct their offensive mistakes in time to face the Cavs, a team that has won nine of the past 11 meetings, at Kenan Stadium.

“Any time that you lose, leaders, coaches, everybody, you’ve got to bounce back. You’ve got to keep things in perspective,” Davis said. “I think our players have been here long enough now that they’ve seen us after huge great wins and they’ve seen us when we’ve lost games that we wish we would’ve won, and we’re pretty much the same coaching staff.”

Davis said there won’t be any major personnel shifts, but the Tar Heels need to become more efficient on third down conversions after going 1-of-11 against Georgia Tech. He said the ball needs to get to UNC’s playmakers more, but he also has no regrets about the play calling against the Yellow Jackets — just the execution.

“We’ve all lost a lot of ballgames here, and we know how to regroup and come back from it,” Yates said. “The leaders on the team are definitely going to have to step up this week and lead everybody to get it out of the back of their minds and move on.”

Davis said the players and coaches dissected the Georgia Tech game during a film session Sunday and talked about what went wrong. He said that by looking at the film, it helps the Tar Heels put the loss behind them and get prepared for the next game.

“This is a young football team that is very, very inexperienced on offense, and no matter what happened on that Saturday, we’re going to have to play better because the challenges are going to get more significant,” Davis said. “And they certainly were last week and this week.”