Reece Beekman wasn’t anywhere near 100 percent. Virginia was rusty after its 11-day finals break. Not excuses for why the second-ranked ‘Hoos lost to #5 Houston on Saturday, but they are reasons.
The Beekman reason
“No, he wasn’t 100 percent, and you know, he didn’t practice a whole lot,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said after Virginia’s 69-61 loss on Saturday.
Beekman, nursing ankle and hamstring injuries that had limited him of late, had a quiet, gimpy, four points and five assists in the setback.
Beekman not being 100 percent is significant because Bennett has rebuilt the offense around him this year, limiting the sets in his favored mover-blocker offense, basically a motion offense, in favor of NBA-style sets aimed at getting Beekman into the lane to create his own shot or open looks on the perimeter.
With Beekman at full strength in Virginia’s first six games, which included wins over two ranked teams, Baylor and Illinois, the UVA offense ranked in the Top 5 nationally in offensive efficiency, scoring 1.164 points per possession.
Since he sprained his ankle in the second half of the win at Michigan, Virginia has averaged 0.957 points per possession in wins over Florida State and JMU, and the loss to Houston on Saturday.
“He didn’t have his bursts. Now some of that’s their defense, right? He couldn’t quite get by them, but not many can just get by those guys, but he didn’t quite get his quite his burst,” Bennett said of Beekman’s play on Saturday.
“I thought he was pretty good defensively, not quite as explosive offensively, and probably a little fatigued because he hasn’t done much.”
Bennett said Beekman had “maybe about two-thirds of a practice (on Friday), and maybe a third of it the day before, and the rest has been more rehab and just seeing how he felt, and he was functional and the doctors did a great job getting him to this point.”
“We weren’t sure we were going to have him, but I thought he played some pretty good defense, obviously, on those guys, and we needed that part, but he was, a little, maybe, whatever, 75, 80 percent, who knows,” Bennett said.
OK, so, again, not an excuse, but a reason.
The finals break reason
Not everybody takes the extended break that Virginia does for finals. Otherwise, there’d be no college basketball for a week in early December.
ESPN would be very unhappy with such a development.
But Virginia has always taken a break to let the kids be students.
In past years, the game back opponent has been somebody like a Cleveland State (2015, 70-54 W), Robert Morris (2017, 79-39 W), William & Mary (2021, 76-40 W).
“I remember playing Villanova in here after a long layoff,” Bennett said after this one, and, yeah, there was that one, an 86-75 win in 2015 over the ‘Nova team that went on to win the 2016 national title.
Bennett was willing to concede that Beekman wasn’t 100 percent, but he was having nothing to do with the layoff effect.
“The way we started, we were right,” Bennett said, alluding to the early 9-0 start, and Virginia led 15-7 seven minutes in, “but they just they wouldn’t go away. And you know, a couple crucial swings, and then you know, you’re playing from behind, and we’ve done that before at Michigan, but not quite up to this point, against that kind of defense that’s going to make you earn and then again, when you get the shots, you don’t make them, that can have a little bit of an effect on you.”
A third reason: The cumulative effect of a tough November, December
There’s still one nonconference game left, against Albany (4-8, KenPom: 333), after Christmas, but in essence, the tough part of the out-of-conference slate is over.
Bennett challenged this team with a tough schedule in November and December. In addition to the Michigan game, which was scheduled by the ACC and ESPN as part of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, Bennett slated his team for games with Baylor, Illinois and Houston.
The 3-1 mark in those games ain’t bad, considering.
“You’re not gonna win them all, and this was a high-level opponent, and we wanted to play these games to hopefully have excitement, have a crowd like this and to try to win, but you get a lot out of them,” Bennett said.
The next step, to Bennett, is determining, “all right, where do we got to tighten the screws, and we talked a lot about that in prepping for this game, because of what they did to us last year. And so, you just don’t have time. We’re getting now into conference play, you know, we’ve got two days, and we’re going to, I think Miami’s in the top 25 or whatever, so, a good opponent, and get ready to play, but I think obviously the guys have played well to put themselves in this position. But I mean, that’s done, this game is done, except what we’ll learn from it, and now step to the next one.”
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Chris Graham
