Virginia Gets Top Seed in South, Faces Gardner-Webb

By Jerry Ratcliffe

A year removed from NCAA Tournament history, when Virginia became the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16, the Cavaliers will get a shot at redemption on Friday afternoon in Columbia, S.C., when they take on another unheralded No. 16 in Gardner-Webb.

The game is expected to start approximately at 3 p.m. and will be televised by TruTV. CBS has assigned Jim Nantz and Bill Raftery as the broadcast crew.

Champions of the Big South Tournament, Gardner-Webb is 23-11 overall, and riding a five-game winning streak heading into the NCAA first round. The Runnin’ Bulldogs finished fourth in the conference regular season with a 10-6 record.

“Gardner-Webb is very good,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said Sunday evening. “They’ve played quality nonconference opponents. I know they’re well coached and I know that D.J. Laster had 32 points in [the Big South title game]. They have good guards.”

Laster’s career-high 32 points propelled the Bulldogs past Radford, 75-65, in the finals, and gave Gardner-Webb its first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament. Laster dominated the paint in that title tilt, and scored 30 of his team’s first 44 points.

Among G-W’s nonconference victims this season were two ACC opponents, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest.

UVA is a No. 1 seed for the second consecutive year and is making its seventh appearance in the NCAA Tournament in the last eight years (including six straight). The Cavaliers are a No. 1 seed for the fourth time in the past six seasons.

With this being Gardner-Webb’s first NCAA appearance (the small private Baptist school near the South Carolina border), the bid was not only exciting but perhaps a little intimidating as well, particularly playing a No. 1 seed like Virginia.

“Scary,” said G-W coach Tim Craft. “But I will say that we’re kind of used to being the underdog, and we were picked sixth in our league and then won our league (tournament).”

While Virginia has finished first in the ACC in back-to-back regular seasons, and won the conference tournament last year, national media constantly reminds the Cavaliers of last year’s shortcoming.

For Bennett, this has already gotten old.

“That kind of comes with the territory,” Bennett said Sunday. “That has been the case all year. You answer the questions when you’re asked. It has been dealt with and it’s really time to play.

“We’ve tried to address the things that are important to us,” Bennett added. “We’ll probably get bombarded with questions [in Columbia], but the No. 1 thing is to be ready to play. This is a new year.”

The Cavaliers, 29-3, lost in the ACC Tournament semifinals last weekend in Charlotte, dropping a 69-59 outcome to Florida State. The only other team that has defeated UVA this season was Duke, both in Durham and in Charlottesville, both times against a healthy freshman phenom Zion Williamson.

Bennett, who reported during the teleconference that his team enters the NCAA healthy, has already started working on moving forward. Virginia held what Bennett described as an intense but “not super long” practice Sunday.

“It’s hard when you get beat in your conference tournament,” Bennett said. “You look at the film and look at the areas you might need to tighten up. We probably didn’t play our best. Florida State had something to do with that.”

Virginia has already played in the same arena in Columbia this season when it defeated host South Carolina’s Gamecocks, 69-52, on Dec. 19. Bennett said it is just coincidental that UVA played there already.

Should Virginia advance past Gardner-Webb, the Cavaliers would face the winner of the No. 8 seed Mississippi (20-12) vs. No. 9 Oklahoma (19-13) on Sunday, also in Columbia. The winner of that game would move on to the Sweet 16 in Louisville at the Yum Center, where the Cavaliers have a 4-1 record.

Also in the South bracket are: No. 6 Villanova vs. 11 St. Mary’s; No. 3 Purdue vs. No. 14 Old Dominion (Jeff Jones & Co.); No. 7 Cincinnati vs. No. 10 Iowa; and No. 2 Tennessee vs. No. 15 Colgate.

With a little more rest and a load of motivation, Virginia appears ready to make a run, while remembering past successes and failures close to the heart.

“I remember we cut down the nets in the ACC tournament last year and we didn’t like the way our season ended,” said junior guard Ty Jerome after the loss to FSU. “So this isn’t the end all by all means. So it’s just about trying to figure out how much better we can get from now to Friday.”