Cavaliers disappear down the stretch in upset loss to rival Hokies

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Don’t know what Mike Young told his team at halftime on Saturday night in Cassell Coliseum, but he should record it and market it to other coaches around the country.

Young’s 20th-ranked Virginia Tech team was looking every bit the part of the 4.5-point underdog they were to No. 8 Virginia during the first half. The visiting Cavaliers were up 29-21 and flexing their usual defensive muscles in limiting the host Hokies to 38 percent shooting.

Heck, if forward Keve Aluma hadn’t been playing well _ he had 16 of Tech’s 21 points _ Virginia might have built an insurmountable lead.

The sky was about to fall on the Cavaliers and they didn’t even see it coming.

After expanding the lead to 39-29 on a Jay Huff hook shot with 15:27 to play, the Hokies kept crawling back into the picture. They knotted it at 47-all on a Hunter Cattoor 3-pointer at the 7:21 mark, and that’s all she wrote.

Virginia, playing more of a finesse game, had no answer for the more physical Hokies. As Tech grew stronger, the Cavaliers weakened and missed 11 consecutive shots, going more than seven minutes without a field goal, watching helplessly as the Hokies went on a 19-0 run and closed out the upset with a 65-51 loss.

UVA watched its 15-game ACC winning streak, which dated back to last season, disappear along with its seven-game streak this season. The Cavaliers are still atop the ACC with a 7-1 record (11-3 overall), but the Hokies are now nipping at their heels. Tech is 7-2/13-3.

“Finesse does not work in this league,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “We looked very finesse-y today.

“[Tech] just ran away with it. You could feel it, how badly they wanted it. I didn’t feel we answered that.”

Bennett was right. Tech established itself as the more physical team and UVA didn’t answer the bell. Aluma had his way in the paint and there was nothing the Cavaliers could do about it despite using five different defenders on him.

Aluma, who scored 29 points (10 of 15 field goals), was a bruiser in the lane, grabbing a game-high 10 rebounds and drew enough fouls to send Jay Huff to the bench (he stayed on the floor for only 23 minutes) and Francisco Caffaro out of the game after a fruitless attempt to stop him.

Sam Hauser, Justin McKoy, didn’t matter. No one was effective against Aluma, who is a Wofford transfer.

“He’s a really good player,” said Huff, who finished with 13 points and four fouls. “Sometimes it’s tough when Papi (Caffaro) and I get in foul trouble. It’s hard to play as aggressively, which is really difficult with a guy like him who’s really aggressive. He had a heck of a game. Hats off to him. I hope we get to play him again and have a different result.”

Virginia’s first game against Tech, which was supposed to be played in Charlottesville, was postponed due to UVA’s Covid-19 issues. Whether that game will be made up or not is questionable.

Bennett has other things on his mind, including a putrid performance by his team in the second half when his defense allowed Tech to shoot 61 percent from the field and 70 percent from the 3-point line.

Meanwhile, Virginia couldn’t have hit water if it had fallen out of a boat. The Cavaliers were as equally miserable offensively as they were defensively.

UVA converted only 29.6 percent of its field goal attempts the second half, a paltry 8 of 27 and even worse from the arc, 3 of 13 for 23 percent. This from a team that lit up Syracuse earlier in the week with 14 3-pointers.

“There were a lot of things we didn’t do right,” Huff said. “A lot of it was on defense. I take a lot of responsibility for that … we just didn’t show up tonight.”

Afterward, Bennett said that UVA’s 7-0 start to the ACC season was a little bit “fool’s gold.” Maybe he was right. The Cavaliers haven’t exactly fed on the upper echelon of the league so far this season.

Tech’s defense, which somewhat mirrors Virginia’s system, was the one that deserved praise in this battle.

Virginia, which relied too heavily on 3-pointers in the second half, did so out of desperation because the Cavaliers couldn’t get anything going in the paint.

“We were having a hard time getting post ups or getting to the free throw line through drawing fouls or on drives,” Bennett said. “[Tech] really bottled up the lane and defended and then they were pretty quick to the threes and sometimes we had to take them.

“Certainly wasn’t one of our better efforts partly due to they’re good defensively on taking the lane away and then challenging, leaving us with some late threes, which is what you want to do when guarding the right way.”

Bennett should know. He has built a program with that defensive philosophy.

This time, his defense was missing in action, dead on arrival, whatever terminology you choose to use. Oh, yeah, didn’t seem like there was a lot of passion either, particularly for a state rivalry game.

Bennett knew.

“We knew what Virginia Tech was going to bring in a rivalry game,” he said. “You’re going to get their best shot. So can we give them our best shot?”

The Cavaliers clearly didn’t get the message, but the Hokies did.

“I think we had all seen that nobody thought we would win this game,” Aluma said. “That just fueled us more.”

Well, at least one team was fired up to play.

Virginia, known for making superb in-game and/or halftime adjustments, flat-lined the second half.

Huff’s driving basket with 8:29 to play was the Cavaliers’ last score until 1:11 remained when McKoy hit a jump shot. During that span, the Hokies reeled off an unanswered 19 straight points and buried a Top 10 Virginia team in the process.

Bennett couldn’t believe his eyes as his team was flattened over those last eight minutes.

“It’s never for the full 40 minutes but you just can’t have big gaps where you’re not getting stops or being assertive enough,” Bennett said. “It was too easy for [Tech] to post up, do things and then make some plays and we just weren’t right.”

The Cavaliers were far from right, but should be able to recover from their derailment. They go to NC State this week. Bennett will have plenty of items to grab his team’s attention in film review and practice leading up to the meeting with the Wolfpack.

Tech, which earned a chest-beating upset over their rival and a Top 10 victim, should have plenty of incentive going forward.

“It’s significant right now, but let’s hit the break,” Young cautioned. “It’s late January. They’re not putting a crown on anybody’s head in January.”

Team Notes

• No. 8 Virginia’s (11-3, 7-1) seven-game winning streak and 15-game ACC winning streak ended
• UVA is 72-16 against teams from Virginia since 1999-00
• UVA has won 25 of its last 29 games against teams from Virginia
• UVA led 29-21 at the half
• Tech gained a 49-47 lead at 7:08 second half, its first lead since an 11-9 advantage at 13:14 first half
• Tech went on a 19-0 run over 7:13 to gain a 63-47 lead
• UVA’s last points came on a Jay Huff layup at 8:25 of the second half
• Virginia scored a season-low 51 points
• UVA went 3 of 4 from the charity strip
• UVA tied a season low with one blocked shot

Series Notes

• Virginia is 95-57 all-time vs. Virginia Tech, including a 23-31 mark in Blacksburg, in a series that dates back to 1914-15
• UVA and Virginia Tech met as ranked teams for the fifth time with the Cavaliers holding a 3-2 advantage
• UVA’s four-game winning streak in the series and two-game winning streak at Cassell Coliseum ended
• Head coach Tony Bennett is 16-7 all-time vs. Virginia Tech

Player Notes

• Double Figure Scorers: Jay Huff (13), Kihei Clark (11), Sam Hauser (10), Trey Murphy III (10)
• Clark scored all 11 of his points in the first half
• Hauser has reached double figures in 13 of 14 games