Key to moving forward in Bennett’s view is ‘DEE-FENSE’

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Having played only two games during a 21-day span coming into Wednesday night’s contest against visiting Morgan State, Tony Bennett just wanted to see his team show some semblance of how it had played before the breaks.

The Cavaliers were playing their best basketball in lopsided wins over Texas A&M and Syracuse in late November and early December. Then came exams and a Christmas break, with their worst loss — a 77-54 whuppin’ at Memphis — sandwiched in between.

Virginia didn’t have any trouble bouncing back from that nightmare in Memphis, beating outmanned Morgan State (minus some of its best players), 79-44, as the Cavaliers improved to 10-2 in wrapping up the nonconference portion of its schedule (see related game story for the blow-by-blow account, plus notebook and box score).

As Bennett told his team afterward, good win, now the real season begins. Although UVA already has one ACC win under its belt, it’s nothing but ACC from here on out. The Wahoos will ease into the conference with games against the league’s two bottom feeders, at Notre Dame (5-7, 0-1 ACC) on Saturday and home against Louisville (5-7, 0-1) next Wednesday.

After getting physically pounded at Memphis by what resembled a hastily thrown together NBA team, Bennett wondered how his team would respond, and noted that he would be looking for toughness for future games.

Morgan wasn’t much of a test — Bears coach Kevin Broadus confessed afterward that his plan was to try to not get beaten by 60 or 80 points (mission accomplished) — but Bennett was still keenly observing his team.

Defense still mattered. UVA might have put up an unusual amount of points against Morgan State and played a lot of bodies, but you can bet your last dollar that Bennett was closely examining the defensive end of the floor.

While the Cavaliers may have a weakness on the boards and dropped from the nation’s top 25, and while the offense may disappear at times, the one thing Bennett wants this team to hang its collective hats on is defense.

Virginia is still the No. 3-ranked team nationally in Kenpom’s defensive efficiency ratings and No. 2 nationally in the NCAA’s scoring defense category, giving up 55.3 points per game (behind only Houston’s 50.0 per game).

Bennett, while taking pride in those numbers, knows it’s a fine line his team walks every night it takes the floor and constantly reminds them of that fact, including during his postgame Wednesday.

“I think we’ve still got some work to do,” Bennett said about the defense. “I think at times, even in this game, the ball either got by us too quickly or we were a little stretched or lost vision, and it’s just really hard to be stingy the way we have to be stingy. That’s our way and always has been here, but it may be even more of a premium on this team to be real hard to score against.

“It takes a real connected group, and if one guy is a little out of sync or not willing to lay it down or fight for position, the ball finds the weak link or the weak spot in the defense, so I think we have to move it up a notch in that area or we’re going to have some tough ones.”

Tough ones like at Memphis. Well, maybe not like at Memphis, although the Tigers found all those soft spots in Virginia’s defense. The Cavaliers may not face another team this season with everything Memphis boasted. It was like men against boys. Duke won’t have that. Carolina won’t have that. Nobody in this league.

What Bennett has to do is bring the level of defense up to its potential, keep protecting the ball, keep forcing turnovers and gradually bring his young team on offensively. Oh, and maybe making free throws might help a little, too, while we’re at it.

Virginia was around No. 300 (out of 351 Division I teams) in free-throw percentage going into Wednesday night (66 percent) and made only 5 of 11 attempts.

“We have to keep tightening up,” Bennett said.

Even walk-on Green Team member Tristan How, who scored on his only shot in his 67 seconds of mop-up duty against Morgan State, knows how important defense is to this team.

“I think there will always be a lot more [Bennett] wants defensively,” How said after the game. “We’ve made strides in the right direction. I think a lot of transfers coming, new guys, so putting pieces together, there’s a lot of work to be done. I think we still need to be a lot more efficient. Definitely not where we want to be.”

One of those transfers, Jake Groves (10 points), understands the emphasis that Bennett places on defense here.

“We can always improve defensively, just doing little things right and stay solid throughout the course of the game,” Groves said. “I think that was one of the things we struggled with tonight, just opening up the second half (when Morgan State, which scored only 16 points the entire first half, started the second on an 8-0 run). If we’re going to be great defensively, we have to do it the whole game.”

Even though Virginia clearly was a heavy favorite coming into the game, the Bears’ Broadus was impressed with what he saw.

“[The Cavaliers] have one of the highest IQs that we’ve played against this year, and we played against Arizona and BYU and some others who were good, but I’ll tell you, the IQ at the level [Virginia] plays at, it’s unbelievable. They don’t lose games because they don’t beat themselves,” Broadus said.

He thought about pressing but then decided that wouldn’t be a very good idea, going back to that IQ thing. He knew Virginia wouldn’t help by beating itself.

“You can’t press a team that don’t throw it away … I mean five turnovers, that’s pretty damn good,” Broadus said.

Instead, Virginia’s defense forced 19 Morgan turnovers (scored 22 points off those turnovers), posted 13 steals, blocked seven shots, had a couple of shot-clock violations and held the Bears to 34-percent shooting (15 for 44).

Not perfection in Tony Bennett’s book, but working toward perfection. That is how Bennett believes this team can succeed.