A key to the game for Virginia going in was not letting Armando Bacot put up another 20-20. Just about the only thing that went right was Bacot only getting 10 and 11 in the 63-43 North Carolina win.
“Yeah, he certainly had a big game against us the first time, and a big emphasis for us was to try and limit that,” said Kadin Shedrick, who with fellow big Francisco Caffaro helped limit Bacot to 10 points and 11 boards.
Bacot actually had 29 points and 22 rebounds in the 74-58 UNC win back on Jan. 8, and Shedrick and Caffaro combined for just two points and two rebounds on their side in that one.
Shedrick had eight points and five boards in 22 minutes off the bench. Caffaro, in 17 minutes, didn’t score, and had six rebounds.
Bacot was 5-of-12 from the field Thursday night. He connected on 12-of-18 two months ago.
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D numbers looked good, but …
Carolina shot just 38.5 percent for the game, and was just 6-of-23 from three-point range. Which looks good on the box score, but Virginia coach Tony Bennett seemed to think the numbers might have been a bit deceiving.
“I guess I’d want to watch tape before I can give it a real answer,” Bennett said. “Yeah, the numbers appear like, OK, you did some stuff, and one of my assistants said, I think the defense wasn’t that bad, but it didn’t feel – I kind of got onto these guys after the game, didn’t feel like it was as sound as it needed to be, allowing some offensive rebounds, getting split on ball screens. We really tried to work hard leading up to this on some of the things that we went against, and I didn’t feel like we executed.
“The eye test, I thought it was pretty poor,” Bennett said. “Numbers are one thing, but that’s the eye test. But I might be wrong. I’ll watch the tape. Sometimes when you’re feeling that pressure because we were struggling to score, maybe that was unfair. But I thought they got down the court a couple times, and some of it led to some turnovers and stuff like that, but as they say, the tape won’t lie, so I can answer that better next time.”
Franklin’s shooting woes continue
Armaan Franklin had five points, was 1-of-7 from the floor, 0-of-2 from three.
Have to feel for the kid, who just hasn’t been able to get it together on the offensive end this season.
Since what felt like his breakthrough night, a 22-point effort (8-of-16 FG, 3-of-8 3FG) in a 71-58 win at home over Miami back on Feb. 5, Franklin (season: 10.9 ppg, 38.8% FG, 26.3% 3FG) has averaged 7.6 points per game, shooting 30.3 percent (23-of-76) from the floor and 25.8 percent (8-of-31) from three over the nine-game stretch.
Last season at Indiana, Franklin had averaged 11.1 points per game, shooting 42.9 percent from the floor and 42.4 percent from three.
Awful jump shooting
Virginia was a more than respectable 10-of-15 on shots at the rim in the loss, and 3-of-11 from three.
On two-point jumpers: 5-of-26 (19.2 percent).
“You know, when we did get some decent quality looks, we didn’t hit them,” Bennett said. “That kind of gets into you, and we’ve talked about this a lot, it puts a lot of pressure on our defense. We didn’t have an answer for stretches.”
Virginia shoots a lot of jumpers as it is, averaging 16.6 per game coming into Thursday night, but 26 is close to 10 more.
On the season, Virginia had been connecting on 43.7 percent on it jumpers, more than double the rate at which it converted Thursday night.
Shoot just the season average, and Virginia makes 11, scores 12 more points, and a 20-point loss is an eight-point loss.
Story by Chris Graham
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