Notebook: What nutritional value did Virginia get out of its cupcakes?

Virginia’s 79-44 win over Morgan State on Wednesday was the team’s seventh victory over a team ranked 100 or higher in the RPI.

The Cavaliers are now 5-0 in Quad 4 games, and 8-0 in games against Quad 3 and Quad 4 teams.

That’s an awful lot of cupcakes.

Which can be filling, but beware of the sugar high.

“I mean, a lot of guys got to play, so that was good, you know, to get guys on the floor, get some minutes and put them in spots. You know, we have, with the exam break, long break, and then obviously winter break, we will get to work. We’ve got practice tomorrow at two to prepare for Notre Dame,” coach Tony Bennett told reporters after the Morgan State win.

Virginia is 2-2 in Quad 1 games – the wins coming over Florida (73-70, Nov. 10) and Texas A&M (59-47, Nov. 29), the losses, ugly, to Wisconsin (65-41, Nov. 20) and Memphis (77-54, Dec. 19).

We should go easy on Bennett for the ease-in approach to the November-December schedule.

He’s only got two upperclassmen – Reece Beekman and grad transfer Jake Groves – in his regular rotation, those two getting minutes with six freshmen and sophomores.

And then there’s the factor of having so many new guys getting big minutes while still trying to learn the Bennett system – Groves and Andrew Rohde, two transfers who are in starting roles, and freshmen bench contributors Elijah Gertrude, Blake Buchanan and Leon Bond III.

You could even throw into the discussion here Ryan Dunn, the talented 6’8” sophomore who is getting 26.1 minutes per game this season, more than double the 12.9 minutes per game he got as a freshman in 2022-2023.

November and December were about getting guys acclimated to their roles, to the system and to each other.

It was almost a given that Virginia, with Bennett and his staff having to figure out how things would fit, would stumble at least a little in the first couple of months.

“We’ve made strides in the right direction, I think, a lot of transfers coming in and new guys, so, putting pieces together,” said Tristan How, a junior walk-on who scored a bucket in the final minute of Wednesday’s win.

How has gotten 14 garbage-time minutes through 12 games played this season; he got 10 minutes total in 2022-2023.

“I think there’s a lot of work to be done,” How said. “I mean, Coach Bennett was just telling us, you know, good win, but now the real playing starts, like, we’re starting conference play. I think we still need to be a lot more efficient. And he always talks about building good habits, managing breakdowns, so, a lot of good stuff, but definitely not where we want to be. We need to keep striving, for sure.”

“I mean, I think we can always improve defensively, you know, just the little things, and doing the little things right, and staying a solid throughout the course of the game,” said Rohde, who is clearly still in the learning phase on both ends, averaging just 6.0 points per game on 35.0 percent shooting, after putting up 17.1 points per game on 44.8 percent shooting as a freshman at St. Mary’s in 2022-2023.

It’ll come for him and for Groves (8.3 ppg, 52.9% FG, 45.7% 3FG); first-year players in Bennett’s system usually see it start to click for them by early February, so, be patient.

The hard part for the new guys is picking up the defense.

“I think that was one of the things we struggled with tonight, just opening up the second half,” Rohde said. “I think if we’re going to be great defensively, we’ve got to be good, you know, as much as we can through the whole game. So, I think that’s one of the biggest things we need to work on.”

The specter of ACC play beginning in earnest this weekend with the road trip to Notre Dame seems daunting, but really, meh.

WarrenNolan.com’s projected RPI team sheet only shows four Quad 1 games on the schedule – the home game with North Carolina, and road games at Clemson, at Virginia Tech and at Duke.

Four other games – home games with Miami and Virginia Tech, road games at Wake Forest and NC State – are Quad 2s.

The ACC is down – so down that six of Virginia’s next nine games, through the end of the month of January, are against teams ranked 100 or higher in the RPI.

There’s good and bad to that.

The good: it’s a chance to get out to a really good start in league play, just by holding serve.

The bad: there’s no room for slip-ups, given the lack of Quad 1 and Quad 2 games on the schedule.

“We’ve got to keep coming together and improving, of course,” Bennett said. “You know, now it’s kind of like your second season. I told them, conference starts. We obviously have played one game in conference, but you’re on the road, so we’ll have to keep tightening up.”