Virginia hadn’t been Virginia lately on the defensive end, and Tony Bennett drove that point home to his team after the 74-68 loss at Virginia Tech over the weekend.
Consider the message received.
“The message was, just get back to our ways, and get back to the pack, and kind of just do what we know we could do and know what we’re capable of,” junior guard Reece Beekman told reporters after the eighth-ranked Cavaliers did their best Malcolm Brogdon-era impression on the defensive end, holding #22 NC State to a season-low 50 points in a 63-50 win Tuesday night.
The Pack, which came in averaging ACC-best 79.6 points per game, had scored in the 60s just three times in 24 games.
The lineup boasts the league’s leading scorer, Terquavion Smith, who finished with 19 points, but needed 20 shots to get there.
Meanwhile, the team’s second-leading scorer, Jarkel Joiner, averaging 16.2 points per game coming in, had five, on 2-of-14 shooting.
Four of the nine NC State players who got into the game Tuesday night scored.
The bench put up a cumulative goose egg: nothing, nada, 0-of-5 from the field in 38 minutes.
State had averaged 16.0 transition points per game coming into Tuesday night.
The total in transition in this one: two.
The points per possession number for the Pack was .847.
All of this from a Virginia defense that had been giving up a very un-Virginia like 1.031 points per possession over its past five games.
“I thought we were ready. Just tried to make them earn,” Bennett said after the game. “You know, they have an inside-otside attack with (DJ) Burns and obviously Smith and Joiner, they’ve been playing terrific basketball, Casey (Morsell), and Casey played well tonight. But just, you know, tried to be back, be ready, get into the ball, and try to be a little sounder and outlast and not yield more than we did last game.”
The return of Kadin Shedrick to the lineup was a help in that effort. The 6’11” redshirt junior had been relegated to the bench last month as Bennett tried to inject life into the offense by moving 6’8” Ben Vander Plas into the starting lineup at the five spot, sacrificing a bit of the defensive soundness he likes for improved flow on the offensive end.
Vander Plas played his way onto the bench last night with another off-night on the offensive end, contributing just four points in 19 minutes, as Shedrick put up a nice night in terms of his counting numbers – 10 points, six rebounds and a blocked shot in 26 minutes off the bench.
More important, Shedrick was a better option in terms of keeping check on the 6’9”, 275-pound Burns, who came in averaging 12.1 points per game, and finished with a modest eight points in 21 foul trouble-limited minutes.
The strategy to try to neutralize Burns was to slide 6’6” power forward Jayden Gardner over to assist Shedrick with post traps when Burns got the ball in the post, and the approach – a staple of Bennett’s Packline defense – worked better than it had last week in Virginia’s narrow 67-62 win at Syracuse and the loss at Tech, in which both opponents were able to exploit the double-teams with Gardner and Vander Plas with regularity, creating open shots on the perimeter and for cutters in the lane.
“You know, you can’t take away everything,” Bennett said. “Sometimes, you know, you make the mistake of trying to do everything perfect, and treat it almost like a calculus problem. And you just, you got to execute, and sometimes it’s what you do best against what they do best, and then if it’s really hurting you, you adjust. But simplicity with hard, tough execution is the way, and our guys have to continue to understand that, and if they do, they’ll have chances, and if they don’t, and we don’t, then it’ll be a struggle.”
Gardner said the team was able to use its two days of prep between the loss at Tech and the game with State to get dialed in to where they needed to be.
“Just us coming into the mentality of Coach telling us this is going to be a cover for each other-type game, and that’s what we did with the post trap, and then I think the guards did an excellent job,” Gardner said. “You know, NC State’s a very potent offense, they can get really hot, and I think we just did a great job of eliminating the guards as well as the big man.
“We had a great two days before State, you know, preparation and just, you know, he just dialed into us just, this is the time of the season that we need to lock in, and, you know, we’re playing for something, you know, it’s not like, last year, we were struggling to get here, like we’re here, so we’re trying to play for something, we’re trying to win a championship,” Gardner said.
This team’s ceiling does appear to be championship, but it’s going to require continued level of play on the defensive end like we saw last night.
Bennett said as much as he wrapped his talk with reporters.
“Prepare well, do what we do, double down on, you know, being tough and sound, and to feed in commitment to defense, because I don’t think we’ve been that way. And so, we’ll have decisions to make moving forward,” Bennett said, perhaps alluding to another lineup adjustment ahead of Saturday’s game with Duke.
“If we want to be as good as we can, everyone has to be committed, and it’s got to take, it won’t be perfect, but it has to be a little tougher, sounder mindset. I was pleased that the guys established that, and they’ll need to continue to establish it at our next practice, and moving forward,” Bennett said.
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Chris Graham
