It doesn’t appear Tony Bennett was asked his thoughts on his team’s woeful rebounding after Virginia’s 56-54 win over West Virginia on Wednesday down in Fort Myers.
You know rebounding is what he’ll be thinking about over turkey and stuffing.
Bennett was asked postgame to weigh in on his team’s defensive effort, which he liked.
“Definitely, yeah, guys flew around,” said Bennett, whose guys held WVU (2-3) to 37.3 percent shooting, and forced 16 turnovers, which UVA (5-1) turned into an 18-4 advantage in points off turnovers.
That was the game, right there – points off turnovers.
Good rotations, for the most part good closeouts – West Virginia was 7-of-21 from three, hitting a couple of tough hand-in-face shots, a couple of loose-ball threes in there.
“For whatever reason against Wisconsin, we were a little indecisive, whether it was flying in there to trap the post, and a little disjointed or disconnected, partly because they played really well,” Bennett said, referencing the 65-41 loss to Wisconsin on Monday, in which it seemed that the Badgers were always a step ahead of what Virginia was trying to do on the defensive end.
“I thought tonight, it started with Reece (Beekman) picking up the ball, being so tenacious on that, but I thought all of our guys did a good job of protecting the paint, and you know, really crowding, especially when (Jesse) Edwards got a catch. We talk about airtime all the time, and it looked that way. Ryan (Dunn) did a great job, Blake (Buchanan), Leon (Bond III) gave us a lift,” Bennett said.
Unwrapping things there: Beekman had four steals, which is what he does.
Edwards, the Syracuse grad transfer, largely had his way with Virginia’s bigs, going for 17 points on 7-of-12 shooting and nine rebounds, his floor time limited to 31 minutes because of second-half foul trouble.
Edwards utterly dominated the Virginia fives, Buchanan (zero points, two rebounds, two blocks, five fouls in 14 minutes) and Jake Groves (five points, zero (!) rebounds, one steal in 21 minutes) similar to the way that Wisconsin center Steven Crowl did on Monday (15 points, 7-of-10 shooting, 10 rebounds).
Dunn (13 points, five boards) and Bond (eight points, seven rebounds off the bench) were, with Beekman (12 points, five assists), the reasons UVA was able to pull this one out.
“Reece has improved so much,” Bennett said. “Some of the plays he made down the stretch, off the dribble in the lane, that’s high-level stuff. So, you know, you need that. The game comes down to making plays at certain times.”
As close as it would end up being, there was a brief time when it seemed that Virginia was about to run away with it.
The Cavaliers held WVU without a field goal for a more than six-minute stretch early in the second half, but weren’t able to get much separation, only going up 10, at 36-26, before the Mountaineers responded with a thunderous 16-4 run that included a run of made threes.
“There were kind of, I think, loose-ball threes, two of them, I can’t remember the third one, maybe he just hit a tough one. You know, then we fouled the three points. Couple things that were tough to overcome. But yeah, that’s hard when you feel like you’ve got a little bit of control, and then you got to reset,” Bennett said.
Beekman said after the game that the key was “not getting too rattled” after WVU got back in the game.
“We just stayed through our offense,” Beekman said. “You know, those games are always good for us. I feel like that’s gonna help us down the season to win those close battles. So, just about our second one like that already in the first five games. I feel like that’s gonna be very helpful.”
It was back-and-forth down the stretch – four ties, six lead changes.
It all came down to an offensive rebound by Leon Bond III, who had eight points and a team-high seven boards in 21 minutes off the bench, with six seconds to go.
Bond got the ball to Beekman, who drove the lane and was fouled with 2.3 seconds left, the game tied at 54-54.
To clear up one question I’d had in my postgame recap, yes, the miss from Beekman on the back end of the two-shot foul, after he’d made the first to put Virginia up one, that was intentional.
“I’ve never seen someone miss a free throw as perfect as Reece did,” Bennett said. “That’s what he did at the end. That was a perfect miss. And we even got the rebound. We did it on purpose. I said, Just don’t airball it, and he said, I got you, I practice it.”
What gave it away to me was the s–t-eatin’ grin on the faces of Beekman, Dunn and McKneely after the play.
The miss by Dunn on the back end of his two-shot foul with four-tenths left was also intentional.
“After he made the first one, we said, miss the second one. Point-four. So …” Bennett said.
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Chris Graham
