Lesson Learned: Virginia Has Work To Do After Lackluster Second Half In Win Over GW
Posted on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018, 7:11 pm
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By Jerry Ratcliffe
Sunday was one of those early season, Rent-A-Victim games, that coaches like Tony Bennett love for a couple of reasons.
One, it was an easy enough victory, 76-57, over visiting George Washington, an outcome that Bennett didn’t have to sweat. Secondly, No. 5 Virginia played well enough to go 2-0, but had enough letdowns, particularly on the defensive end of the floor, that Bennett will have plenty to gripe about to regain the team’s attention in the next practice.
There was a point in the second half where the Cavaliers were on cruise control, up by their largest margin of the game _ 31 points _ and kind of went to sleep. GW put together an 11-0 run, sawing into UVa’s lead, 68-28.
Bennett had seen enough.
Back came the starters with 6:09 to play. Out came the subs: Marco Anthony, Mamadi Diakite, Jay Huff, and Kody Stattmann.
There were defensive breakdowns, something that Bennett simply will not tolerate regardless who is on the floor.
“I think [GW] just penetrated a little bit more, kicked it out for rhythm threes, even if we had a hand up it was still rhythm, so I think that will definitely be a point of emphasis this week,” said UVa guard Kyle Guy, who shared scoring honors with Ty Jerome at 20 points apiece.
Bet your house on that summation by Guy about this week’s emphasis.
“Coach wasn’t super happy about it, so we’re going to have to come back better this week,” Guy said.
Guy had left the game with 10:33 to play, and thought his day was over. He returned at 6:09, along with Braxton Key, De’Andre Hunter and Jack Salt. Jerome was still on the floor.
They took care of business, righted the ship, allowing Bennett to clear the bench with a couple of minutes remaining. Even former manager Grant Kersey got into the act with a couple of free throws, providing a few lighter moments in the postgame media chat.
While Bennett was pleased with the win, he was disappointed that he had to reinsert the starters.
“I think we’re going to need [those guys] … there are 10 scholarship guys that are available,” Bennett said. “That’s why I was discouraged that [GW] got a rebound, put it back we had a turnover, they scored. I put the starters back in.
“I want those guys to hang on and get all those minutes and develop,” Bennett said. “Those are so valuable. I know the crowd wants to see Grant and those guys to come in, but I want those guys to fight for execution and purpose regardless of the score, and that didn’t happen.
“That left kind of a bad taste in my mouth,” Bennett said.
He was disappointed that GW won the second half, 40-34, had more fastbreak points (10-5), which is something that rarely happens to UVa, and had nearly as many bench points, 16-to-17. Turned out that guards Guy and Jerome led the team in rebounding with six each, not a statistic that the coaching staff will like either.
Diakite said that while Bennett told the team it was good on offense _ not yet great _ that has not been the case on defense, the staple of Bennett’s program.
“But the defense, we got to be … I don’t know what’s the word for it,” Diakite stumbled a bit. “You can’t find any word for it. We got to be, I want to say unified. We are very unified, but it looks like we are not unified defensively. But that’s what we got to get to.”
Amen.
Leadership and defense were the question marks about this team after losing Isaiah Wilkins and Devon Hall. The leadership part seems to have been answered. The defense? Can it be as good as last year, or even approach that level of efficiency?
TBD.
GW came into John Paul Jones Arena with nothing to lose. The Colonials were off to an 0-2 start, having lost a 77-74 decision to Stony Brook after blowing a 22-0 lead.
“I am going to take a lot of positives home because we are going to build off this,” said GW coach Maurice Joseph. “We have a lot of young guys in that locker room. We took a step forward.”
Joseph knew coming in that Virginia was a near impossible out. He has observed the Cavaliers for years, first as an assistant at GW the year the Colonials knocked off UVa at GW early in the season. It was his assignment to scout UVa going into that upset, so he knows.
“We could have said, ‘you know what? Alright they are number five in the country and they’ve got this All-American and that All-American, and 7-feet in the paint,’” Joseph said. “Our guys didn’t shy away and more than anything, that makes me proud.”
We see early season upsets dotting the landscape of college basketball, and Virginia is more aware of the impossible occurring more than anyone after last March. It never got to the point where the Cavaliers were sweating the outcome, but it was disturbing to Bennett that his backups weren’t giving the effort he expected.
They will all pay for it with sweat come Monday’s practice.
Meanwhile, UVa fans got to see another large dose of one of its two 7-footers, Jay Huff, a 7-1 redshirt sophomore, who clocked 15:29 of floor time and scored three points (1-2 from the floor, a nice dunk, a free throw, a missed 3-pointer, three rebounds, two fouls, an assist, and a blocked shot).
Huff had eight points in eight minutes in UVa’s opener, including a 3-pointer (yes, a 7-footer who shoots 3’s).
“Jay can do some things offensively,” Bennett said. “He can bother some shots. I want to keep challenging him to rebound and play as big as he can and fight for position. The flashes are there, the skills. There are going to be times he can help us (when UVa has foul trouble, the right matchup, or Huff just has it going).”
There were times Sunday when Huff played alongside Salt, then later alongside Diakite, giving the Cavaliers plenty of size on the floor. Those lineups could prove helpful as the season progresses.
For now, UVa’s backups learned a valuable lesson about intensity, a mistake that likely won’t happen again.
