Virginia coach Tony Bennett, after his team’s 56-54 win over Northeastern on Saturday, talked about spinning the dial on his different base offenses to try to find something that would work.
We found out Tuesday, as the ‘Hoos were getting taken to the woodshed by Memphis in a 77-54 lashing, that there’s a wheel for Bennett to spin on the defensive side.
Things got so bad in this one that, in the second half, out of options, Bennett had his team come out of a media timeout in a zone.
A zone, y’all.
“You’ve covered me, you know how much I do that,” Bennett told a reporter after the game.
Me, I honestly can’t remember the last time Bennett had his team play zone.
I’m seeming to remember that maybe the Gonzaga game back in the COVID year, maybe.
“They had us kind of guessing and, you know, the amount of things that we don’t usually do, even on underneath out of bounds plays, it just, again, I think we got, we got rattled,” Bennett said.
“In every area, they were kind of taking it to us, so this won’t be a fun film to watch,” Bennett said. “But there’ll be a lot to certainly teach from, and it’s why you want to be come in and play a team in this setting. I know we’ve got work to do, and we’ll use it in the right way.”
Coach was a lot more patient in the interview room than he’d been on the sidelines. The usually stoic Bennett has, the past couple of outings, visibly tried to breathe life into his team, which uncharacteristically for a Bennett-coached team – motto: we go hard – has looked to be going through the motions for uncomfortable stretches.
Northeastern, a middle-of-the-pack CAA team, took advantage and had Virginia on the ropes a couple of different times on Saturday, so it’s no surprise that Memphis, a Top 25 team, would be able to rattle the Cavaliers early and often.
I assumed whatever sleepwalking had let Virginia get behind the 8-ball with Northeastern would have gotten snapped out of them with the near-miss win.
And I was wrong.
Memphis got out to a 13-1 lead four minutes in on Tuesday night, and Virginia, having dug itself another deep hole – Northeastern led 16-4 coming out of the gate on Saturday night – had to play from behind all night.
The ‘Hoos got the margin down to one twice late in the first half, and Memphis led 38-32 at the break.
An Elijah Gertrude layup at the 18:44 mark got the deficit to four, and a nice Leon Bond III turnaround jumper had it at five with 15:30 to go.
Memphis took control from there with an 18-2 scoring binge, holding UVA to a single bucket over a nearly seven-minute stretch.
That was it.
“Their experience, their quickness, athleticism, is real, and that, you know, if you don’t have a level of real good soundness in that game, and tough-mindedness, it’s hard to stay attached,” Bennett said.
“They took it to us. I thought we answered early, OK, you know, 13-1, we got back into it. But every time I thought we’re getting some footing, all of a sudden, it was either a careless turnover where they made a play, or we broke down, certainly defensively, we couldn’t, couldn’t even do that stuff that well.”
The TV announcers kept talking about Virginia’s relative youth, and yeah – Reece Beekman is a senior and four-year starter, and Jake Groves is a grad transfer, but Gertrude and Blake Buchanan are freshmen, Bond is a redshirt freshman, Andrew Rohde, Isaac McKneely and Ryan Dunn are sophomores.
“Our inexperience showed. It sure did,” Bennett said. “You know, Reece was the only one, you know, as a perimeter guy, the rest were, a lot of times, we had three first-years out there, two or three second-years, and that showed, but that’s not an excuse. We have to be better than that.
“Again, it’ll be valuable to go through this, as painful as it is. But their pressure really, really got to us, and that’s, you know, that’s how they play, and if you don’t have guys that can handle it, that gets challenging. I was hoping we’d be able to be a little a little better.”
Another reporter asked Bennett what his message was for his team after this one.
“What do you say to your team? You know, a lot of them are gonna go home for three or four days from here, a few of them will come back, and then we’ll regroup, but kind of, we talked about, you know, the soundness and the toughness factor,” Bennett said. “And we got to take a look at that and figure some things out, but not a good way to go into break. But again, a valuable learning experience, and we’ll see what we do with it. Who knows how we’ll respond.”
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Chris Graham
