It’s Mailbag Time. If you’ve got a question on Virginia Basketball, email me at [email protected].
Q: Any thoughts on playing the two big men together tonight to leverage size advantage?
– Ned Parrish
Tony Bennett had to go to Francisco Caffaro early in the 54-52 win in Charlottesville last month because the starter at the five spot, Kadin Shedrick, got into early foul trouble.
It worked – Caffaro scored a career-high 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds in 31 minutes, held his own against Virginia Tech’s Keve Aluma, who had 22 points, but needed 20 shots to get them, and Papi has been a starter since.
Shedrick got 17 minutes that night, which means, doing the math, that Bennett went with the two on the floor together for eight minutes.
The reason for that was that power forward Jayden Gardner was the drizzlin’ you-know-whats that night.
Gardner was held in check by Virginia Tech’s Justyn Mutts, scoring just four points on 2-of-9 shooting in 31 minutes.
The ‘Hoos outscored the Hokies by 10 that night in Gardner’s nine minutes on the bench.
Bennett noticeably subbed Gardner out at the 12:00 mark of the second half after a missed assignment on defense led to a Tech alley-oop, and left him on the sideline until the next media timeout.
The thinking there being, if he’s not going to do much out there on offense, might as well focus on trying to prevent points.
You can win games 74-69 or 54-52, either way, it still counts as a win.
Bennett obviously goes out the gate with his usual starting five, including Gardner at the four and Caffaro at the five.
I don’t know that we necessarily see Gardner get less than 30 minutes unless he gets into early foul trouble, but if he struggles against Mutts like he did last month in JPJ, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Bennett go with Caffaro and Shedrick together down the stretch to go defense-first to try to keep the game within hailing distance into the final minutes.
Story by Chris Graham
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