Beating a sub-.500 team that lost at home to Iona and Delaware State wouldn’t normally enter the conversation of top wins for a #2 team like UVA.
Not many #2 teams have to win on the road in the ACC without two starters.
That’s why the 70-34 win at Wake Forest Wednesday night is topping my list of Virginia wins in 2014-2015.
Eleven days ago, the same Wake team took Virginia to the final possession in a 61-60 loss, rallying from 13 down in the final 10 minutes to put the scare in the Cavs in the final minute.
The same Demon Deacons that lost to Iona and Delaware State had also beaten two ACC teams on the NCAA Tournament bubble, N.C. State and Miami, in a nine-day span earlier this month.
Even if sophomore point guard London Perrantes was in the lineup Wednesday night, Wake could see the blood in the water. But then it was announced about an hour before tipoff that Perrantes would not be available, joining All-America candidate Justin Anderson on the bench.
That meant extra playing time for untested freshmen Marial Shayok and Devon Hall, who have had their good and bad moments this season, with more of the bad moments coming lately.
It also meant more pressure on junior Malcolm Brogdon, sort of the last man in the backcourt left standing, literally, to not only fill the scoring load left by the absence of Anderson, but the ball-handling and offensive-direction responsibilities of Perrantes.
Naturally the Cavs play their best offensive game in weeks, shooting 50 percent from the field, and held Wake Forest to 21.8 percent shooting.
The stakes of this one were as high as any UVA had faced all season. The Cavs are still on track for a #1 national seed in next month’s NCAA Tournament, but a loss to a Wake team would put that seed line at risk, and who knows, maybe start a free fall, with tough games remaining at home this weekend against Virginia Tech and then next week on the road at Syracuse and at Louisville.
It’s hard to top winning back-to-back road wins at Maryland and VCU in December, the win in Chapel Hill over a good UNC team, the dismantling of a good mid-major Harvard, the three games holding opponents under 30 points.
All of those were at full strength. Virginia was 20-1 with a lead at the half over Louisville when Anderson went down. The Cavs closed that one out with Evan Nolte, who to that point had been getting limited minutes at the four, basically the fifth man in a four-man post rotation, taking Anderson’s minutes at the two.
That win is the second most impressive win of the season, considering the situation and again the stakes.
Beating a good N.C. State game in Raleigh the next game out, while still figuring out rotations and beginning the chemistry experiment that the stretch without JA was going to be, ranks third on my list.
This whole stretch – going 6-0 to this point, closing out Louisville and winning the five without him in the lineup, the Wake game without Anderson and Perrantes – has been to me the most impressive stretch of UVA basketball.
The 19-0 start was tame in comparison. Again, that was the full-strength UVA team, with three of the KenPom Top 20 players nationally giving you 30 minutes a night.
Beat an improving team with confidence by 36 points in their gym without two of your starters to fight off the haters for another day, you get that ultimate nod of appreciation out of me.
– Column by Chris Graham
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