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Lost in the ugly: UVA played pretty down the stretch in N.C. State win

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uva-basketball newOh, yeah, that was ugly. For the longest time, it looked like second-ranked UVA and N.C. State would have trouble getting to 40.

Can’t get much uglier than that.

N.C. State, playing for its postseason life, had no excuses for why it looked so sluggish. It had #2 in its house down a top player, a sellout crowd seeing the blood in the water.

Virginia, for its part, could be forgiven for looking as discombobulated as it was for the first 30 minutes. Without Justin Anderson, the team’s second-leading scorer, out for the next four weeks with a broken finger, for the first time this season, the N.C. State was a chemistry experiment, as my colleague Scott German put it on our postgame podcast, for UVA coach Tony Bennett and his squad.

Bennett unloaded the bench in the first half, playing nine guys in various combinations, trying to figure out the right mix to get points and get stops.

It was 21-19 State at the break, and inside 10 minutes to go in the game, it was still just 31-29 Pack. UVA to that point was 13-of-40 from the field, couldn’t-throw-it-unguarded-into-the-ocean territory. The chemistry experiment wasn’t going well, obviously.

Malcolm Brogdon was struggling with the extra attention on the perimeter without Anderson to draw attention to the other side of the floor, with just eight points on the scoreboard, still making him the leading scorer, but mainly by default.

Mike Tobey and Anthony Gill were a combined 3-of-11 from the field.

And then, like turning on a light switch, Virginia became the efficient offensive juggernaut it had been all season.

The Cavs shot 6-of-11 from the floor in the final 10 minutes, scored 11 times in their last 20 possessions.

OK, so that’s not quite juggernaut, a point per possession for a 10-minute stretch, but in a slugfest that ends with a 51-47 final, it’s about as close as you can get.

Brogdon finished with 15. Gill and Tobey went a combined 4-for-5 from the field in the final 10 minutes, reserve Devon Hall made two big plays in the stretch, a layup off a nice assist from Brogdon, then a pretty pick-and-roll assist to Tobey for an and-one.

The defense, as Bennett so often preaches, didn’t go into a slump even when the offense was still trying to catch up to the fact that Anderson isn’t in the mix right now. N.C. State shot 31.0 percent in the first half and 33.3 percent for the game, and State had just one guy who logged minutes Wednesday night shoot 50 percent or better (Beejay Anya, who was a modest 2-of-3).

Ralston Turner, who lit up Virginia in the first half of State’s 61-51 loss to UVA in Charlottesville last month, was 2-of-9 with just four points. Trevor Lacey was 6-of-13 from the field; Anthony Barber was 5-of-14.

Answering one question: how would Virginia fare defending the perimeter without the athletic Anderson? Nobody outside of Bennett gives Evan Nolte, who started in place of Anderson and logged 24 minutes, any credit for being able to play defense, but he more than held his own against an N.C. State perimeter trio that torched Duke last month for 41 points on 13-of-25 shooting in an 87-75 Wolfpack win.

Virginia answered the other big question in the final 10 minutes. Can this team score enough points without Anderson stretching opponents with his three-point shooting and attacking the rim with his unreal athleticism?

The answer is, sure, there’s nobody on the roster who can do what Anderson can do on the perimeter or in the lane, but even so, yes, these Cavs can still score. Enough.

That’s an important qualifier. Enough.

– Column by Chris Graham

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