Here’s more fodder for the people who think Virginia coach Tony Bennett should never be criticized and write me to tell me that I’m not qualified to question any of his basketball decisions.
His conscious decision to not use the three fouls that his team had to give in the final five seconds and change of regulation in what turned into an OT loss to NC State may be what keeps his team from getting an NCAA Tournament bid.
Feel free to @ me.
I’m a big boy. I can take it.
Virginia, despite a reverse Cavalanche of mistakes, physical and mental – three missed free throws by Reece Beekman, Ryan Dunn fouling a three-point shooter – still led 58-55 with 5.3 seconds left, and had Isaac McKneely, an 87.3 percent free-throw shooter coming in, going to the line for a one-and-one.
One free throw, the game is over.
But just in case McKneely would miss – and he’d already missed a free throw in this one, so, you had to consider the possibility – you would think that Bennett would instruct his kids, hey, we’ve got three fouls to give, if iMac misses, we need to use them.
You’d think that, and you’d be wrong.
“We couldn’t foul him in the backcourt, they got momentum because we missed the free throw, and they were coming down, and once they got down, we did not want to foul in the act of shooting. We just were worried about that,” Bennett told reporters after the game, explaining his thinking.
That was one worry, and it was well-founded, because with 43 seconds left, Dunn had fouled Casey Morsell shooting a three, and Morsell made all three to cut a six-point Virginia lead in half.
But that was Dunn fouling a guy in Morsell who was in position in the flow of the offense to get a look from three.
Not a guy in a scramble situation, having to dribble the ball to get in position for a wing and a prayer.
The second worry: “We were worried about maybe if they make a free throw and then a miss with (DJ) Burns and those guys on the free throw rebounding,” Bennett said.
Also well-founded. Remember last year’s Notre Dame game in JPJ. Down three, Trey Wirtz was fouled with three seconds left, made the first free throw, then intentionally missed the second free throw, and the ball ended up in the hands of Dane Goodwin, who had a good look from three that rimmed out at the buzzer.
How much this scenario played into Bennett’s thinking is a your guess is as good as mine kind of thing.
“We just decided, let’s make them earn on that stuff,” is all we know from what Bennett said after the game.
Now, another way to make them earn would have been to make them get the ball up the court by at least using a foul or two of the three that Virginia had to use before getting into the bonus.
One foul, even, would force State to inbound the ball, and Pack coach Kevin Keatts was out of timeouts, having used two to try to stem UVA runs, and his third with 16 seconds to go to try to set up what he thought then was his last shot at getting a three to tie.
Instead of a scramble play, then, you get a chance to set up your defense, and force the guys on the other bench to pull an inbounds play from the backcourt or midcourt out of their asses, if you’re Bennett.
No such instruction was coming, though, and as you saw from Bennett’s quote on this, it wasn’t an act of omission.
Just coaching malpractice.
That one is going to get me some emails. So be it.
Everything about how the last 5.3 seconds played out is the evidence in my case on that charge.
Bennett didn’t put any rebounders on the blocks, so the thinking there had to be, we’ll try to stop the ball at halfcourt, right?
Except that, no – the defenders behind McKneely dropped back after the miss, overcompensating for Dunn’s mistake on the Morsell foul moments earlier.
Morsell rebounded and got the ball to point guard Michael O’Connell, who after getting the outlet pass faced token pressure from McKneely, dribbled once, twice, three times, four, a fifth time, then shimmied slightly to his left.
There were four Virginia players in the vicinity as all of this was going on – McKneely, Dunn, Beekman and Jordan Minor.
Burns almost clogged things up by trying to set a screen for O’Connell, bringing Minor over to the ball.
Beekman, for his part, was preoccupied with DJ Horne, who was flaring out behind the three-point line, apparently to try to get open, though if O’Connell had passed the ball back to Horne, there wouldn’t have been enough time for Horne to get a shot off.
Dunn, meanwhile, was hanging out in the general vicinity of Morsell, who was trailing the play, but again, if the ball were to have ended up in Morsell’s hands off a pass, there’d have been no time.
It was O’Connell or bust.
McKneely, to his credit, made it a tough shot.
O’Connell was six feet behind the three-point line when he released the ball with a full second left on the clock, fading away to his left.
It hit glass, then did a victory lap before falling through.
“Again, we were in that spot. We didn’t have to be. Obviously, we had some chances to win it, but that was the thought process. We were going to stop them with our defense, we’re going to get it done, we’re going to knock them down at the line, and make it a two-possession game,” Bennett finished his answer to the question on tactics.
A lot had to happen for NC State, down six in the final minute, to get the game to OT, and only this final 5.3 seconds is on Bennett.
Tony Bennett didn’t go 1-of-5 at the line in the final 70 seconds, didn’t foul a three-point shooter.
But he had three fouls to give and 5.3 seconds to burn in the event that a free throw might not go through the net, and it didn’t do him any good to be able to take them to the OT period.
That Bennett didn’t cop to this being a major mistake in his press conference doesn’t mean it wasn’t a mistake, or that he hasn’t told himself that it was a mistake.
Me pointing all this out doesn’t make me the bad guy here, either.
I’m just telling you what happened; I don’t like it, either.
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Chris Graham
