Boston College stunned top-ranked North Carolina beating the previously unbeaten Tar Heels 85-78 Sunday night.

“We just met the challenge,” Eagles senior guard Tyrese Rice said. “I felt like they hadn’t been challenged all year. Every team that they’ve played against, they just walked right through them. You look at people playing defense against them, they stay back, people drive and they’re standing straight up and not trying to contest shots. I can’t watch a tape if everybody’s playing like that. We wanted to challenge them to see if they could step up and play as hard as we were going to play.”

Before the loss many fans thought North Carolina was capable of finishing the season with a perfect, undefeated record.

“We never sat in the locker room and said, ‘Let’s go straight undefeated,’” Tar Heels PF Tyler Hansbrough said “That was more people outside the locker room talking about that. Now you can put that to rest and bring us back down to reality, and we can all focus on what we need to do better instead of all this hype.”

Hansbrough is taking the right approach. A loss won’t keep them from winning a championship but going into the tournament overconfident could have.