For the first 19:59 Tuesday night, #6 Virginia had executed its game plan against Vermont’s Anthony Lamb to perfection.
The Catamounts’ leading scorer, putting in 18.2 points per game, Lamb was 1-for-6 from the floor with four turnovers.
He hit a buzzer-beating three to send his team, which had trailed by as many as 10, into the halftime break down 24-18.
Then the floodgates opened.
Lamb hit eight of his first 11 shots from the floor in the second half, at one point scoring 17 in a row.
For UVA fans, and most definitely for the players and coach Tony Bennett, what was happening had a familiar feel.
“It reminded me of last year when we played against Purdue. Carsen Edwards hit it again and again and again. It’s not that you couldn’t stop him, it’s just one of those days when everything falls in,” said Cavaliers senior Mamadi Diakite, who had an up close and personal look at what Lamb was doing, as one of the two defenders trying in vain to rein in Lamb.
The ‘Hoos eventually got Edwards under wraps in the overtime period of their Elite Eight win over Purdue.
And, eventually, Virginia put the clamp down on Lamb, who finished with 30 points on 10-of-21 shooting, but didn’t score in the final 5:25 of the 61-55 Cavaliers’ win.
Down the stretch, Diakite and Braxton Key, who split the responsibility for checking Lamb, forced him into three misses from the field and two turnovers.
That a guy who had 25 points in the first 15 minutes had touches on just five of Vermont’s last 12 possessions speaks to the work put in by Diakite and Key in the key moments of the game.
Coach Tony Bennett was asked how much of Lamb’s hot shooting up to that point was him and how much was defensive breakdowns.
“We did do a good job on him for the most part, but I think 65-35, maybe 70-30,” Bennett said. “I thought there was enough time in those two or three threes that could’ve been the difference, and it’s just, Come on. That’s the stuff we’ve got to get better at.”
Bennett is probably being hard on his guys. At the height of the Lamb run, he was just grabbing the ball and shooting it, and draining the shots, like a player in the ‘90s video game NBA Jam, of He’s on fire! fame.
And like Edwards in the Elite Eight game last year, when Diakite and Key extended the defense on him, Lamb just stepped further back.
“He surprised me with his range today. I didn’t think he had that,” Diakite said.
Story by Chris Graham
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