#3 Virginia Defeats #20 Virginia Tech, 64-58
Posted on Monday, Feb. 18, 2019, 11:12 pm
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By Scott Ratcliffe
BLACKSBURG — Kyle Guy scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the first half, Ty Jerome added 16 points and Braxton Key sank a pair of dagger 3-pointers as No. 3 Virginia pulled the regular-season sweep of 20th-ranked Virginia Tech, 64-58, Monday night at Cassell Coliseum.
Guy gave the Cavaliers (23-2, 11-2 ACC) a lift offensively in the first half, knocking down 6 of his 10 shot attempts when the rest of the team combined to make 6 of 16. The Hokies (20-6, 9-5) hung around, tying the game at 34 early in the second half before a decisive 14-4 UVA scoring run over the following six minutes swung the momentum in the Wahoos’ favor to stay.
“We played a better, sounder, tougher game, physically and mentally, on both ends,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said of his team’s performance in the second half. “First half, it wasn’t the case. Second half, it was for us, and that’s what we needed to do.”
De’Andre Hunter’s third-chance bucket punctuated the spurt, which gave the ‘Hoos a 48-38 lead with just over 11 minutes to play. Like they did all night long, the Hokies refused to throw in the towel and kept chipping away behind the play of Kerry Blackshear Jr., who got it back down to single digits with two free throws before a three-point play by freshman guard Jonathan Kabongo made it a five-point game, sending the Cassell crowd into a frenzy with still 9:44 to go.
Jerome stepped back and nailed a big 3 on the Cavaliers’ next possession to quickly quiet things. Hunter then poked the ball free and eased in for a dunk, and then Key’s first bucket of the game, a contested 3-ball, gave the ‘Hoos their largest lead of the game, 56-43, with 5:51 remaining.
Blackshear scored his 1,000th career point and cut the Virginia lead back down to seven with 2½ minutes on the clock, but Jerome found Guy on the ensuing sequence, somehow all alone beyond the arc in front of the Cavalier bench, and Guy delivered a deadly triple to push it back to 10 with 2:08 showing.
Key sealed the deal in the final minute with one last trifecta as he was congratulated by his teammates on the way back to the bench.
“It was bigtime,” said Jerome of the Key dagger. “We needed it, and he needed it for his confidence, and I was just so happy to see a great kid like that come up big for us.”
After giving up a handful of easy baskets on the interior early on, the Wahoos used a 13-3 scoring run midway through the opening half to transform a 3-point deficit into a 23-16 lead, their largest of the half. Guy scored 7 points during the stretch, including a pair of 3s, and Jerome capped it off with a 4-point play with 6:33 until halftime.
Tech stormed back quickly behind six straight points from Blackshear, but the Cavaliers went back ahead on an alley-oop toss from Guy to Mamadi Diakite.
On the next trip down, Key came away with a steal and looked to have a layup, but the ball rimmed out and who else was there but Guy with an emphatic follow slam, even hanging on the rim for an extra second and letting out a little yell.
“It felt great,” Guy said of the flush. “Braxton has trouble finishing sometimes — most of the time he misses and it’s like soft off the rim, so that’s the only reason I jumped, because I was like, ‘There’s a high chance that he might miss this.”
Jerome joked: “It was his second and a half in-game dunk, but it was a putback. It was really impressive, really impressive. I was kind of shocked, impressed, happy for him. Big play, so it was a bunch of emotions… and had to get back on defense, too. It was awesome.”
Guy wasn’t done, though. He scored underneath off a heads-up Jerome inbounds pass with 1:44 to go and then sank his fourth 3-pointer of the half with 36 ticks showing.
VT took advantage of the eighth Wahoo turnover of the half as Isaiah Wilkins — not that Isaiah Wilkins — nabbed a pass and scored just before the first-half horn sounded, and UVA went into the break up 32-29.
Coach Bennett admitted that he was not so pleased with the way things were going in the opening half.
“I think in the first half, [the Hokies] just missed some wide-open shots,” Bennett said. “We were very unsound. They’re hard to guard, they run good action, slips, they can shoot it, and we didn’t do a good job [defensively]. We were very poor in our underneath, out-of-bounds defense, we gave up so many easy baskets.”
Virginia gave up 20 points in the paint in the first half alone, and 38 for the contest. The Cavaliers gave up a total of 13 points on 13 turnovers, but edged the Hokies 31-28 in the rebounding department.
Tech shot 40 percent for the game (23 for 58) and just 11 percent (3 for 28) from downtown, after entering the game with the country’s third-best percentage from 3-point land (42 percent). Blackshear scored 23 points and hauled in a game-high 13 boards. Ahmed Hill added 16 points on 6-of-17 shooting and Nickeil Alexander-Walker finished with 11 points and 4 assists.
Guy also led the Wahoos in the rebounding category, grabbing 7. He sank 6 3-pointers on the night, which moved him ahead of London Perrantes (211) for sixth on the school’s career list with 212, and also recorded two steals.
Guy’s three consecutive 20-point games marks the first time a Wahoo has had such a stretch since Malcolm Brogdon did so three years ago. The junior from Indianapolis has now made a 3 in 25 consecutive contests.
Jerome had a team-best 6 assists to go with his 16 points and 3 rebounds, while Hunter added 10 points and 4 rebounds on a rather quiet night scoring-wise.
Diakite chipped in with 8 points, 6 boards and a pair of blocks, stretching his streak of games with at least one swat to 18. Key made just the two 3-pointers on the night, but they were certainly big ones.
The Cavaliers now have a few days to rest up for the road trip to Louisville Saturday afternoon.
