How can a team win one Saturday by scoring 80 points, and the next Saturday by scoring 49? Don’t overlook the how the refs are calling the game factor.
“It was a physical game, you know, that the refs allowed us to play,” said Virginia coach Tony Bennett, who, for the record, wasn’t exactly what you’d say was enamored with how the game was called, which you can tell because he picked up his first technical foul in 14 years in the first half after the latest in a series of non sequitur no-calls.
When Tony Bennett is dropping “bleep” bombs, it’s the refs who are having a bad day.
There were 24 fouls called, total, in Virginia’s 49-47 win over Wake Forest on Saturday, and three were Wake fouls in the final 38 seconds trying to preserve clock.
Flip side: the crew working UVA’s 80-76 win at Florida State last week called 41 fouls.
It’s hard to imagine that teams are that inconsistent at how physical they are from one week to the next.
Bennett was frustrated at Wake defenders grabbing and clutching his guards as they tried to run off screens in his mover-blocker offense, which is built around screens freeing up the guards for shots, pocket passes to screeners cutting to the rim, and kickout passes to the perimeter as the defense scrambles to recover.
On Virginia’s side, hey, if the refs are stifling their whistles, you adjust your defensive approach accordingly.
“They drive hard, they’re physical,” Bennett said. “We tried to be, I mean, we just tried to be in position and work, and you didn’t have a choice, and I hope, you know, I’ll watch the film, I hope we did stand in their drive line. And just, again, the energy of the crowd, and their effort and will, or mindset, allowed us to be, because, you know, we’re not going to win any bodybuilding contests. Maybe a couple guys would have a good, you know, a sixth or seventh place, but we’re not the biggest, strongest, and we’re young, but there’s nothing, you can’t measure heart and position and willingness, and I thought we had that tonight in terms of our defense being set and ready.”
Translation: they got away with grabbing us, we got away with bodying them.
If you have an issue with the final score being 49-47, don’t blame the players or coaches; blame the ACC.
Dental premonition
Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes had reason to have seen the ugly game coming.
“I knew should have been a telltale sign. I’ve always said playing Tony’s teams is like going to the dentist and having a root canal and getting your teeth pulled out,” Forbes told reporters after the game.
“Before we got out of Winston yesterday, my entire left side of my mouth, my bridge fell out into my mouth, and so I lost three teeth right there coming up here. So, I think it was apropos for what I was about to face today.”
Teeth don’t lie.
One of 11?
I did the math in my Five Observations column last night, and even accounting for who it was shooting the free throws yesterday, Virginia should have been 9-of-13 at the line, not the 1-of-11 that ended up being the final statline.
The UVA media-relations folks only give us access to two players after games, and one of those two, yesterday, was freshman center Blake Buchanan, who happened to have missed all three of his free-throw tries.
B-Dub is now 22-of-42 at the line on the season, with the odd item on his game log that reminds you, in Game 2, the 73-70 win over Florida, he had 10 makes at the line.
Ten, in one game.
Twenty-two, on the season.
We see there both his potential, and how he set a high bar, and has yet to get back anywhere near it in a while.
I digress.
Point here being, Buchanan can make free throws, and yet hasn’t made one in a game since Jan. 3.
I’m not making that one up, by the way.
This Virginia team is the 11th-worst team in D1 in free-throw percentage (64.1 percent), eighth-worst in free-throw attempts per game (14.2) and fourth-worst in makes (9.1).
So, our kids don’t create a lot of opportunities for charity tosses as it is, and when they do, they don’t make many of them.
What gives?
“I didn’t realize how bad we shot ‘til after the game, looking at it, but I mean, we practice it every day,” Buchanan said.
Pardon me for interjecting, but: they had to notice that nobody made a damn free throw until Isaac McKneely’s final attempt with six seconds left.
If nothing else, the collective groans of 14,600 people would get your attention to what was going on.
Back to Buchanan:
“We do stuff after practice, you know, we compete, try to get that mindset,” he said. “You know, today they didn’t fall, but you know, we’ll get back to it, keep working out, and we’ll knock them down the next game.”
Um, no, probably not.
The season-high in makes was in the season opener, the 80-50 win over Tarleton State, with 24 makes at the line.
On 39 tries.
We should have seen it coming, right?
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Chris Graham
