Bennett’s ‘Pack-Line’ suffocates 14th-ranked Aggies in ACC-SEC showdown

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Buzz Williams had the unpalatable experience of facing Virginia’s “Pack-Line” defense several times while coaching at rival Virginia Tech years ago. Now at Texas A&M, Williams couldn’t clearly explain to his new team what it was in for in Wednesday night’s ACC-SEC Challenge.

“You can’t really replicate this [in practice],” Williams said after watching his 14th-ranked Aggies get derailed, 59-47, by host UVA (for a blow-by-blow game story, notebook and box score, check out our game story here).

A&M had been riding high in the polls, having won on the road at Ohio State and SMU. The only blemish was giving up 96 to top-20 Florida Atlantic, fresh off last year’s Final Four.

Nothing had prepared the Aggies for Tony Bennett’s “Pack-Line,” as Williams watched the suffocating, python-like defense slowly wrap itself around A&M, squeezing the life out of its prey.

The Aggies, accustomed to scoring 79 points per game, were held to a season-low, 32 below its average. Star guard Wade Taylor IV, the SEC Preseason Player of the Year, coming off a 35-point performance against FAU, had the misfortune of drawing ACC Defensive Player of the Year Reece Beekman in the showdown.

Beekman, playing on a less-than-100-percent leg, handcuffed Taylor, who finished with 9 points and 5 turnovers on a 2-for-10 shooting performance. Beekman, by the way, had another stellar evening with 12 points, 5 assists, 2 blocks and 3 steals.

While Texas A&M came into a rowdy John Paul Jones Arena as one of the nation’s best offensive rebounding teams and left town with that distinction still intact, the game wasn’t decided on the boards as many had predicted. Rather, it was all about the making the most of possessions, something that played precisely into the “Pack-Line’s” hands.

Williams was fine with the Aggies’ dominance on the glass (42-30) and second-chance points (16-3). What bothered him most was Virginia’s defensive ability forcing his team into making mistakes.

“We shot more balls than they did (56-53),” Williams said. “We made more free throws (9) than they attempted (6). We beat them on the offensive glass by 11, on the defensive glass by 1. If there was anything statistically that I would say is that we gave them the ball 16 times (turnovers).

“When you don’t get a shot, and arguably what we do best is get a shot … I understand that we’re not going to play with zero turnovers, but 16 is an astronomically high number, percentage-wise, in a 59-possession game. It’s just bad math.”

Granted, Bennett acknowledged that A&M would win the rebounding war, but inserted 6-foot-9 Jacob Groves into the starting lineup because of his mobility, his scoring potential and his experience, having started previously as an Oklahoma Sooner.

Yes, 6-11 Blake Buchanan was taller, but didn’t have the seasoning of Groves from the past battles of the Big 12. Plus, Groves could stretch the floor as a perimeter threat, which opened some driving lanes.

Bennett had practiced the Cavaliers hard upon their return from Florida, where they were pounded on the boards in a split with Wisconsin and West Virginia. Williams’ A&M team plays a somewhat unique defense in switching on every screen, and so UVA had to turn up its defensive intensity.

In a physical contest — Groves was bloodied and showed up for the postgame media chat sporting a bandage hiding four stitches — easy baskets were tough to come by.

“The guy just kind of head-butted me … I didn’t even know I was bleeding,” said Groves, who scored 12 points on a 5-for-8 shooting performance, including two triples. “The big emphasis this week was just having to box out every possession, every player. It’s important for our guards to help rebound, and a guy like myself, who is far undersized playing the five against [A&M]. My job is just maybe not get the rebound myself, but to make sure [A&M] doesn’t get the rebound. So there was a lot of pushing and battling and shoving guys around, whatever it takes.”

Virginia’s starting lineup gutted it out most of the game, with all five finishing in double figures scoring, while the Cavaliers didn’t get a single point from its bench.

All of the starters — Beekman, Groves, Ryan Dunn, Isaac McKneely — played over 30 minutes, while Leon Bond and true freshman Elijah Gertrude clocked seven minutes. Gertrude burned his redshirt with the appearance, filling in backcourt time for point guard Dante Harris, who watched from the bench, his foot in a boot after rolling an ankle in practice.

Williams, who is 3-8 against Bennett, expected the defensive tsunami. The Aggies didn’t.

“Number 2 (Beekman) is an NBA defender,” Williams said. “And number 13 (Dunn, who had 5 blocked shots and 3 steals) is real close. And then, I think 35 (Bond) changes their team from an athleticism standpoint in the forward-ish positions. In the 10 times I’ve played them, they’ve had a lot of good players and a lot of NBA players, but they can put these three guys out there that make it hard for you to get past off the pass. They converge on the ball.”

Perhaps the unsung hero of the night was Rohde, who actually led the team in scoring with 13 points (5 of 14 and 3 for 8 on triples) and played some hairy-chested defense in a team-high 37 minutes.

For the record, the “Pack-Line” limited the Aggies to 30.4-percent shooting (17 of 56), only 24 percent in the second half, and an anemic 17 percent from the 3-point arc (4 of 23).

Wednesday night was the type of game that Bennett dreams about.

“We talked about group identity and that was the message, that our identity showed the way we needed it to in a game like this,” Bennett said.