Louisville just what the doctor ordered to cure Virginia hoops woes

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Virginia and Louisville came into Big Monday looking for a big win. Maybe the national TV audience didn’t take the matchup so seriously, but it couldn’t have been much bigger for the two middle-of-the-pack ACC teams fighting for their postseason lives while looking for their identity in the process.

The Cavaliers and Cardinals were almost identical, Virginia ranked No. 100 in the NET rankings and Louisville No. 113. Both teams were 11-8 overall, 5-4 in the conference.

UVA, which has not lost back-to-back games all season, desperately needed to hold serve on its own court. Louisville, which was booed off its home floor before its biggest crowd of the season in Sunday’s loss to Notre Dame, had lost four of its last five coming into Charlottesville.

The last thing Chris Mack needed was a bad start. How does getting outscored 25-8 in the first 11 minutes on the road sound? Must have left muttering those immortal words of Rick Pitino several years ago during the shortest postgame press conference in ACC history when he spit out his frustration against the Cavaliers: “Virginia is our Kryptonite.”

Mack, who actually more resembles Lex Luthor than Pitino ever could, must feel the curse down to his core. After Virginia’s super-fast start and strong finish, Mack suffered yet another defeat to the Cavaliers, 64-52.

Louisville has never won at John Paul Jones Arena and is only 2-13 against Virginia since the Cardinals joined the ACC. Tony Bennett is much too nice a guy to pull an Aaron Rodgers to the Bears and proclaim “I own you,” but it’s true.

Considering the circumstances, Louisville was exactly what the doctor ordered for UVA’s woes. The Cavaliers need every win they can get at this point, win all the games that they’re supposed to win, and take their chances against the remaining Quad-1 opponents they’ll face on the back end of the schedule.

Examining Virginia’s NET breakdown, the Cavaliers are 1-3 vs. Quad-1 opponents, 3-2 against Quad-2, 2-3 against Quad-3, and 6-0 against Quad-4.

What that means is that Quad-1 wins and Quad-3 and 4 losses will be important when Selection Sunday comes in terms of not only selection, but seeding, should Virginia right its ship.

Tony Bennett didn’t put his team through any torturous workouts on Sunday between a shabby performance at NC State and Monday night’s match.

He did tell his team he wanted more intensity, something that seemed to be lacking in Raleigh when the Wolfpack became only the second team during the Bennett era to shoot 60 percent against the Pack-Line defense.

It wasn’t the same team that came out swinging against punching-bag Louisville. After the 25-8 start, led by point guard Kihei Clark, the Cavaliers led 35-23 at the break.

Bennett said his team played “Virginia Basketball,” against Louisville, meaning strong defense, good ball movement on offense. The Cavaliers had 20 assists (a career-high 11 by Reece Beekman) on 24 field-goal attempts. They held Louisville to 37.5 percent.

“I thought we were crisp, found different things, moved well without the ball screen pretty well,” Bennett said. “There was a nice synergy in terms of how we played and were connected. Then they paired it with really good defense with good ball pressure, and responded the right way.”

To Mack’s credit, he tried a little bit of everything, slowing Virginia’s attack down with a 1-3 matchup zone, which the Cavaliers found open shots against and shredded with sharp passes.

Bennett liked the way his team bounced back from Saturday’s weak performance at NC State.

“NC State played well, we didn’t play the way we needed in order to be in that game,” Bennett said. “Tonight, they touched on it and sustained it pretty well. There was some good Virginia Basketball out there, hard offense, tough defense, didn’t give up easy looks and for the most part were connected again.

“Louisville was a little bit off their game, but I hope we had something to do with it.”

Clark celebrated the win with what his teammates described as “birthday buckets,” as the diminutive guard led all game scorers with 15 points on his birthday. Opponents must wonder if Clark is approaching 30 since it seems like he’s been hanging around the ACC for a long time.

Certainly between his and Beekman’s shared 16 assists, teammates benefitted, boasting four Cavaliers in double figures for only the second time this season. Jayden Gardner had 14, Kadin Shedrick 11 and Armaan Franklin 10, while Francisco Caffaro finished with 9.

Mack boarded the bus afterward unable to shake the thought of the horrible start for his Cardinals.

“The 25-8 deficit really put us behind the eight ball,” Mack said. “Virginia is a team that struggled to score all year, and after they got 25 points in the first eight or nine (actually 11) minutes, it was way more of a challenge for them to score after that point. We just can’t put ourselves in a 25-8 [deficit] to start a game.”

Kryptonite.

Bennett should be sure to get his managers to pack it for the trip to Notre Dame this weekend.