With Tar Heels Coming To Town, Bennett Looks For Answers After Purdue Collapse
Posted on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2019, 11:15 pm
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By Jerry Ratcliffe
Photo by Jon Golden
Purdue may have accomplished more than avenging last March’s overtime Elite Eight loss to Virginia on Wednesday night. The Boilermakers provided a road map for future UVA opponents on how to give the defending national champions a run for their money.
The Cavaliers’ 69-40 loss in West Lafayette was their worst defeat since the infamous 87-52 defeat at the hands of Tennessee in Knoxville on Dec. 30, 2013. Yes, the one that prompted captain Joe Harris to drive his beat-up truck to Tony Bennett’s house on New Year’s Eve to learn what could be done to turn things around.
We all know the end of that story. The Cavaliers finished 30-7, losing to Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen.
That team had something that the current roster doesn’t — or at least hasn’t proven that it has it — yet: pure shooters.
Purdue coach Matt Painter put together a great gameplan to defend the Cavaliers in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. He matched Virginia’s two big men with two of his own, trapped the post every time Mamadi Diakite caught the ball down low, and forced UVA into becoming a perimeter-shooting team.
Last season that would have been instant death for just about any opponent with the likes of De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome and Kyle Guy on the roster. This season, not so much.
Virginia ranks near the bottom of Division I basketball (No. 345 out of 353 teams) in 3-point field-goal percentage (38 of 159, 23.9 percent) and certainly didn’t enhance its numbers against the Boilermakers, going 4 of 24.
Without being harsh, consider that forward Braxton Key, a decent 3-point shooter, was out after having wrist surgery, and that Kody Stattmann had just returned to the lineup after missing four games with a “mono-like” virus, according to Tony Bennett. Still, Mamadi Diakite, Jay Huff and Kihei Clark, all good 3-point shooters, were ineffective against Purdue.
Then again, just about anything Virginia did was ineffective.
“They cleaned our clock,” Bennett said after. “We couldn’t guard them one-on-one. Our defense couldn’t stop them inside, outside or keep them off the glass. That’s usually a recipe for disaster.”
The one thing throughout the Bennett decade-plus that fans and opponents could always count on was smothering defense. That had been the case in the first seven games this season, but mostly against Rent-A-Victim type opponents.
Purdue was the real deal. Big, physical and unafraid of Virginia’s reputation.
Bennett said his team got manhandled. True dat.
“They took whatever they wanted,” the coach said, words rarely uttered from Bennett. “We are inexperienced and it showed in a big way.”
There’s no immediate cure for inexperience. Bennett and his staff’s patience will be tested going forward. Last March, when UVA ended Purdue’s Final Four dream, nobody was thinking that Jerome and Guy would be seeking greener $$$ pastures once the season was done.
Perhaps Stattmann, Tomas Woldetensae and freshmen Casey Morsell and Justin McKoy will regain their shooting touch and turn things around for UVA. Maybe they won’t. There’s no way to tell.
What is disturbing to Bennett, though, was his team being manhandled all over the floor and not playing Virginia defense.
If they thought Purdue was physical, just wait until the ACC boys come to town.
Even Painter couldn’t believe his team held the Cavaliers to 40 points, even though he knew Virginia was a bad perimeter-shooting team. He didn’t think his Boilers could turn over the Wahoos 16 times.
He was, however, banking on making UVA beat him over the top.
“We tried to keep the ball out of the paint and make them shoot over us as much as possible,” he said.
His strategy worked like a charm.
As Phony Bennett, the Twitter parody account author, put it so appropriately after the game, “I have never been so at peace with a 29-point loss.”
As the real Tony Bennett put it so appropriately after the game, “We’ve got to figure out a way that gives us a chance.”
The real Bennett doesn’t have long to figure things out, because North Carolina — a team with its own struggles — comes to town on Sunday afternoon (4 p.m.) for an extremely rare December matchup, thanks to your friends at ESPN.
First of all, it’s stupid to play such a high-profile ACC game this early in the season. There’s only so many high-marquee conference games on the schedule, so why bump one up to this early in the season when teams are trying to establish their identity, rather than in mid-January or February when they’re playing at the top of their games?
Why? We’ll tell you why. Ratings. Nothing but ratings.
Still, Bennett and UNC’s Roy Williams don’t have time to worry about such things. They’ve got to coach their teams.
The Tar Heels suffered their most lopsided home loss under Williams on Wednesday night, losing 74-49 at the Dean Dome to No. 6 Ohio State. UNC was ranked No. 7 (by the way, UVA was No. 5, a ranking that Bennett blew off, pointing to it was way too early to know such things).
Not only did Carolina get drilled but freshman big man Armando Bacot suffered an ankle injury and is not expected to play against Virginia.
Williams is searching for answers as well, stating that his team’s offense “is not very good.”
In that case, maybe even Purdue’s road map won’t help.
