Second-ranked UVA escaped Blacksburg with a narrow 50-47 win over a Virginia Tech team that remains winless in the ACC. Obviously this means something is amiss in Hooville. Because, you know, how?
Give Virginia Tech and its first-year head coach, Buzz Williams, credit. Williams game-planned this one about as well as he could, going small with four- and five-guard lineups at times to try to space the floor against the bigger and faster Cavaliers, and for a long spell it worked.
The Hokies eventually ran out of gas down the stretch, scoring just four points in the final 10:34 on 1-of-11 shooting, but to that point, in opening up a surprising 43-33 lead over the unbeaten ‘Hoos, Tech was shooting 57 percent from the floor against the best scoring defense in the nation.
Virginia was able to turn things around by matching Williams with a small lineup of its own.
“They had hard matchups for us and they were running good stuff. So I went with Marial [Shayok] for a while and said we would switch on ball screens. I wanted to be a little more mobile and see if we could close on those shooters and still block out,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said afterward.
Which is to say, then, that Williams, with less at his disposal, was able to get the #2 team in the country to play the game on Saturday on his terms. Consider that a moral victory, even if Williams won’t do so.
“I’m not trying to be silly, but if we’re supposed to be applauded for playing hard, I think you can do that over at the Blacksburg Rec [Recreation Center]. It has to be more than that,” said Williams, whose team drops to 0-6 in the ACC with the loss.
The atmosphere in Cassell Coliseum was as intense as anywhere in the ACC or anywhere in the country for two hours Sunday afternoon. Fans who showed up expecting a Virginia pasting got what they came for as the Cavs built an 11-point win into the latter stages of the first half, but a 10-0 Hokie run eventually narrowed the gap to three at the half.
A 16-0 second-half run produced that 10-point lead midway through the final 20 minutes, and those same fans who had mainly come out to see their team give the old college try against their bitter rivals from Central Virginia were suddenly out for blood.
Bringing us back to the Virginia side. Down 10 with 10 minutes left, having scored just three points in the half to that point, with their coach, normally averse to using his timeouts to quell opposition runs, having already used three in a futile attempt to get the ship back on course, they suddenly found their mojo.
“We were struggling, but once we hit a three around the four-minute media timeout, I said, ‘Just keep your composure, keep your composure. Try to get it to a two-possession game, three-possession game. There’s lots of play left,’” Bennett said.
And then the key play of the game. Down 45-43 with 3:46 left, coming out of a media timeout, Bennett turned to a play that he had just installed in practice the day before. Having noticed that the Hokies come out of media timeouts in a 2-3 zone, Bennett signaled for an alley-oop pass to a cutting Justin Anderson sneaking from the three-point line behind the zone.
Anderson did a double-take at the play call, but he and point guard London Perrantes ran the play to perfection, and the jam tied the game at 45 and sent the sizable UVA contingent in the arena into a frenzy.
After a defensive stop on the other end, Perrantes found Anderson again, this time at the top of the key for an open three-pointer, and the basket gave Virginia the lead for good.
Virginia got a win shooting 34.7 percent from the field, being on the wrong end of 10-0 and 16-0 scoring runs, allowing its opponent to shoot 45.2 percent.
It wasn’t pretty, to say the least. Neither were Kentucky’s pair of double-OT wins over Ole Miss and Texas A&M a couple of weeks ago, or its narrow home win against struggling Vanderbilt earlier this week.
Teams that are undefeated this late in a season are expected to dominate second-division opponents like Ole Miss, A&M, Vandy, Virginia Tech. What fans don’t think about is how those teams, one, still recruit Power 5-level talents and give them scholarships, two, in the cases of Texas A&M vs. Kentucky and Virginia Tech vs. Virginia, had home-court advantage, and three, the Kentuckys and Virginias of the world get everybody’s best shots.
Credit in this case to Virginia Tech, its players, its first-year head coach, for a helluva effort, and credit due to Virginia for getting a win when the outcome could have just as easily been a blowout loss.
And, oh, yeah, neither Kentucky nor Virginia is going to finish the season undefeated. Fans need to learn to enjoy the ride while they can.
– Column by Chris Graham
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