I’d put Virginia’s November up against anybody else’s in the country. UVA scored 86 points in a win over Baylor, then two days later beat a talented Illinois team.
The Cavaliers closed out the month with a come-from-behind win at Michigan in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
The 6-0 start pushed Virginia into the Top 5 in the national polls.
The December ‘Hoos look more like last year’s group that finished its season in the NIT.
“We’ve got work to do,” coach Tony Bennett acknowledged after last night’s 66-64 loss at #22 Miami. “Got off to a good start, but you know, we shot the ball so well early in the year, and now when the shots are not going in, sometimes you, it’s sort of, it says, OK, where are you strong, where do you need improvement? And I think that’s where we’ve got to keep attacking those areas.”
Virginia has now lost two in a row, and while there’s no sin in losing on the road at a Top 25, and losing at home to a Top 5, it’s more the how – not just how the ‘Hoos lost, but how they’ve been playing since the flip of the calendar – that’s the concern.
Back in November, Virginia ranked fourth nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency, scoring 1.164 points per possession, according to KenPom.com, with Bennett and his staff injecting new sets into his long-favored mover-blocker motion offense, trying to take advantage of the unique skill set of third-year point guard Reece Beekman.
Beekman, in November, averaged 11.6 points and 6.2 assists per game, with 10 points and 10 assists in the win over Baylor, 17 points in the win over Illinois, 18 points on 7-of-10 shooting in the win at Michigan.
Beekman injured an ankle in the Michigan win, and though he was able to finish that one out, coming up with a key steal in the final minute to help seal the deal, he hasn’t been anywhere near 100 percent since.
Compounding the issue for Beekman has been a second injury, to a hamstring, that has further limited him, and the UVA offense as a whole.
Since the Michigan game, Virginia has seen its offensive efficiency dip significantly, to 1.000 points per possession, which would rank 223rd nationally for the full season.
Beekman in that stretch has averaged 7.0 points and 6.3 points per game – I’m leaving out the JMU game, in which he played just four minutes before having to sit with the hamstring injury – on 33.3 percent shooting.
Bennett conceded that Beekman hasn’t been 100 percent for a while, and that Virginia needs him to be healthy to be able to get back to where it was last month.
“We need all hands on deck,” said Bennett, who went deep into his bench in Tuesday’s loss, going to Francisco Caffaro, who hadn’t played since getting four minutes in the win over Florida State on Dec. 3, and Taine Murray, who got three minutes in the win over JMU on Dec. 6, but had only made four appearances all season before last night, the other three in garbage time.
Bennett was visibly at a loss at times last night in terms of trying to figure out ways to jumpstart his team. To his credit and the credit of his guys, they worked their way back from down 15 early in the second half to make it a game, twice cutting the deficit to a single point, and earning a chance to tie or win on the final possession.
The turnaround shows that the will is still there, even if the clean play on both ends of the floor has been lacking of late.
“When you don’t shoot well, you know, you want to be, I think, we need to be a little sound and a little scrappier in certain areas,” Bennett said. “We talk, what does it mean, doesn’t mean you always win, but playing to win in the right ways, and whether that’s just being assertive and sound and tough on both ends of the floor, and that needs to be at a higher, more consistent level.
“We’ll keep addressing that, keep working on, you know, obviously trying to get quality shots, but you can’t give up some of the breakdowns that we’re having defensively, and that, I think, showed in how we couldn’t get stops in the first half, and that put us in that spot. We were better than the second half. So, a lot of areas to work on.
“Again, good start, but you know, maybe starting now we’ve dipped a little bit, and we’ve got to get to find a way to be as good as we can be, whatever that is,” Bennett said.
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Chris Graham
