Wahoo Preview: No. 3 Virginia at Michigan

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Tony Bennett couldn’t help but wonder how his Virginia basketball team would handle big-time competition when the Cavaliers took on ranked Baylor and Illinois teams in Las Vegas over a week ago.

The Wahoos knocked off both those teams and vaulted to No. 5, then No. 3 in the national AP poll. Certainly that helped prepare UVA for tonight’s task of taking on Michigan on the road (9:30 p.m.) in the final ACC-Big 10 Challenge. Virginia is a 3.5-point favorite.

“I knew each team [in Las Vegas] was a quality team and I wondered would we be able to hang in there and battle against the quickness and the guard play and that kind of intense defense, hold our own on the defensive end of the glass,” Bennett said recently while looking back at Vegas. “We had to play from start to finish.

“So it showed that we can be a good team and if we’ll just keep pursuing quality and improve. There were four good teams there and so it’s who’s going to improve from here on out that is going to determine a lot. I felt we sustained and we didn’t back down and I liked that.”

Virginia can’t afford to back down against the 5-1 Wolverines in a hostile environment tonight, one Bennett visited while working for his father, Dick, as a member of the Wisconsin staff years ago.

Michigan has struggled of late in a lopsided loss to Arizona State and two games that were closer than they should have been against Ohio U. and Jackson State.

Much of the Wolverines’ problems have come on the offensive end of the floor, where they are shooting a collective 45 percent (No. 181 in the nation) and even worse from the 3-point line, No. 250 nationally.

Part of the problem is that backcourt mates Jaelin Llewellyn and Kobe Bufkin have been awful from long range, combining to shoot a miserable 15.2 percent from the 3-point line thus far. Jett Howard makes up for that a little by shooting 44 percent from the arc.

Michigan can counter with big man Hunter Dickinson, but he hasn’t played like the All-American many observers expected.

“Obviously, I know [Michigan] has Hunter Dickinson,” said UVA center Kadin Shedrick a few nights ago. “He’s an elite talent. I’m looking forward to the challenge. I’ll be ready for the opportunity.”

Virginia will use Shedrick, Francisco Caffaro and Jayden Gardner to combat Dickinson’s size, but Virginia’s perimeter players, all of whom shoot higher than 40 percent on 3-pointers, could give Michigan’s defense fits if they are on their game.