You know where this is going. Virginia won Tuesday night, so the world is back on its axis, the bandwagon is picking up passengers, a national title is back in the crosshairs.
That’s how this works.
Cue up the questions and answers about how a 69-62 home win over Clemson has us seeing the world through rose-colored glasses again.
“Clemson made some tough shots and played extremely well. We definitely wanted to buckle down on defense and get some stops like we usually do, and I felt like we did that today,” point guard London Perrantes said. “They had been playing well coming in, but we kept our lead. Our defense made some key stops, and we made some key buckets towards the end.”
He makes some good points there. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, a narrow win over Clemson would have felt like a comedown for this Virginia team, which had started the season 12-1 with double-digit wins over #3 Villanova, #6 West Virginia and Notre Dame.
Clemson, for its part, was 7-6 after opening ACC play with a loss to #2 North Carolina, but my, how things have changed.
UVA came in having lost three of its last four, at unranked Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech and Florida State, and Clemson had won five in a row, the last three (Louisville, Duke and Miami) over ranked teams.
Rose-colored glasses or not, this one was a good win.
But this penchant to come up with a narrative that one win is some kind of redemption, that’s a bit much.
“We have been in games on the road and of the ones we’ve dropped, they’ve been possession games that really could have gone either way. I’ll be honest with you; the wins at home have also been possession games. To say there was a three to go in and out against us it would have been a tie game under two minutes. You saw how tight this was. That’s just the way it is.”
That was Virginia coach Tony Bennett, who has been struggling to push the right buttons the past two weeks, even in victory.
Remember last week’s win at home against then-#8 Miami? Bennett couldn’t look that 66-58 win in the mouth and not feel like his team hadn’t put in anywhere near its best effort, and he was right.
Same is true for this nice win over a Clemson team that came in 5-1 in ACC play. Virginia used a 13-2 run to open up a 13-point lead midway through the second half, and still couldn’t put Clemson away until the final seconds.
A big issue Tuesday was the play of senior forward Anthony Gill, who struggled to keep up with Clemson star Jaron Blossomgame. Blossomgame exploited Gill on the perimeter, which makes sense, because Gill primarily plays post defense as a four, a power forward.
Blossomgame is what we like to call a stretch four, who in his case is OK in the paint, but deadly on the perimeter when he gets matchups against guys who don’t usually have to run through picks and close out on threes.
Blossomgame was 4-of-6 from three-point range and had a game-high 23 points, and Gill got into foul trouble trying like mad to keep up.
Gill is almost always a plus on the ledger for Virginia, but he had a rare negative plus-minus, at -3, on Tuesday.
Isaiah Wilkins and Mike Tobey picked up the slack. Wilkins had 10 points on 4-of-7 shooting, and checked Blossomgame in the post when Gill went to the bench in foul trouble.
Tobey had a modest six points and six rebounds, but his defense in the post keyed the big run that opened up the double-digit lead.
“It felt like we were playing as a team again. We were really gelling,” said Wilkins, who has been coming off the bench of late after getting five mostly effective starts.
“They hit a lot of tough shots and have some really good players, but in my opinion we just had this vibe that we were going to get it done today, and it paid off,” Wilkins said.
Devon Hall got his second straight start in the backcourt, alongside Perranes and Malcolm Brogdon, and for a night, at least, he was the answer, scoring 11 points on 3-of-5 shooting from the field, 2-of-3 from three, 3-of-4 from the line, with four rebounds and two assists in 26 minutes.
You almost forget that Hall was arguably the more heralded point-guard recruit in the Class of 2013, ahead of Perrantes, who has gone on to be a three-year starter.
Hall redshirted his freshman season, and has struggled at times just to get minutes, with Perrantes, Brogdon, and 2015 first-round NBA pick Justin Anderson, among others, ahead of him in the rotation.
“I’m just trying to stay patient and continuing to work hard,” Hall said Tuesday. “It’s about guys making plays for me and me being able to make plays for other guys. We’re just sticking to the system.”
Which is, of course, the right answer, when you play for Tony Bennett.
It’s a team, not a collection of me’s.
Bennett, even with the win, isn’t convinced that his team is anywhere near having turned any corners.
“I don’t know what our potential is, but I want us to get to that line. We have to get to that line, and I think we took a step toward that,” Bennett said. “I don’t know how good we can be, but I want us to reach that line and know that there will be a lot of close-possession games and we need to get some stops.
“Again, we left some points on the board at the free throw line and even some off the inside shots that I thought we should have had. It could have made a difference and could have also made a difference in some of the other games. To come back home, play a good team, and come away with a win, I am thankful for that.”
And that’s all we should take away from this one.
Virginia got a W against a tough out in Clemson that has been playing over its head for three weeks now.
Nothing more, nothing less.
“It is different for us. It’s definitely different for me. I’ve never been on a Virginia team where we have struggled to get stops and our defense has been questioned. But that comes with the territory,” Brogdon said.
“Every season is going to be different and we have to realize that. This season has been different. We’ve had more roller coasters at the beginning of the season with high expectations, but we are not a team that listens to the expectations from the outside. Like Coach Bennett said, we have to just put the blinders on and focus on what we have to do to reach the goal ahead of us. I think we’re righting the ship and getting back on track.”
– Story by Chris Graham
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