Virginia Owns Crunch Time In Sweet Sixteen Battle

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Photo by Matt Riley, UVA Sports Media Relations

LOUISVILLE — When Tony Bennett called time out with 4:42 remaining in Thursday night’s — or rather Friday morning’s — Sweet Sixteen matchup against Oregon, Virginia had the Ducks exactly where it wanted them.

Al McGuire used to refer to it as “white knuckles time,” with the whole season on the line, win or go home. This was familiar territory for the No. 1 seed Cavaliers.

The moment required poise and smothering defense, part of UVA’s DNA. Bennett’s teams are built for moments like this and there is no better example than this NCAA South Regional semifinal.

Virginia kept its cool, buckled down on defense, the tenet of Bennett Ball. If this was going to require winning ugly, the Cavaliers were the masters of their fate.

Oregon didn’t score another field goal the remainder of the game and needed four free throws in the final 17 seconds just to keep touch as Virginia pulled out a 53-49 victory over the Pac-12 champions, and advanced to the Elite Eight for the first time since the “Mistake by the Lake” in 2016.

The Cavaliers, who set a UVA record by capturing the 32nd win of the season, will face Purdue in Saturday’s region championship with a trip to the Final Four at stake. The Boilermakers know something about close games, too, having outlasted Tennessee in overtime as an appetizer for Virginia’s game. The overtime match pushed the Cavaliers’ starting time back to 10:34, prompting Bennett to crack afterward, “We’re the only team in the tournament playing Thursday, Friday, and Saturday … I don’t know how fair that is.”

After Ty Jerome popped his third 3-pointer of the night to put UVA out front 48-45, both teams experienced four straight empty possessions down the floor each before Kyle Guy found De’Andre Hunter all alone under the basket for an easy layup and a 50-45 advantage with 27 seconds to go.

While the Cavaliers played with poise, the Ducks appeared panic-stricken, indecisive, and melted into a puddle of goo on the Yum Center floor over the final five minutes. Virginia’s defense gave them nothing.

“I think we just started over-dribbling too much,” Oregon point guard Payton Pritchard said. “We just got away from what got us there in the first place. I mean, we just forced up some bad shots.”

Down the stretch, the Ducks took quick shots, bad shots, and paid the price.

“Virginia does a real good job of just making things difficult and kind of stretching possessions out, so I think that played to their strong suit,” said OU forward Paul White.

Ducks coach Dana Altman fell on the sword for his team coming unglued at the end.

“I did a really poor job,” Altman said. “We’ve got to get better possessions than that. That’s my job. We got rushed a little bit there and just had poor possessions. I don’t want to take anything away from Virginia. They make a lot of people take bad shots, but we didn’t handle that very well.”

Precisely. That’s Virginia’s bread and butter.

In his last time out, Bennett stressed to his team the importance of defense down the home stretch. He knew that was the key to advancement and he couldn’t have been any more spot on.

“One-and-done them,” Bennett beamed afterward. “They got a shot up, rebound. Just fight for position. I just kept talking about, just fight, just fight, and don’t give them anything easy.”

Bennett likened it to a slugfest, the last man standing, a “knuckle-buster,” he called it.

So, it wasn’t pretty. It’s not the Miss America pageant. It’s survive and advance the way Jimmy V’s guys scratched and clawed their way through upset after upset 36 years ago. The way Rollie Massimino’s Villanova team shocked the basketball world.

It’s March. Win any way you can.

A classic, it wasn’t. Virginia shot 36 percent, Oregon 38. The Cavaliers attempted a season-high 33 shots from beyond the arc and connected on only nine (that’s 27.3 percent for the math nerds out there).

Ugly? How about Guy’s night? He was 2 for 11 from Bonusphere as he continued to struggle in postseason play from 3-point range. The UVA sniper had a string of 18 consecutive misses until he finally knocked down a couple in the second half.

Virginia desperately needed both.

It wasn’t all ugly, though. The Cavaliers found beauty in the most unlikely places.

Freshman point guard Kihei Clark, the target of heavy criticism from portions of the UVA fan base in the latter parts of the season, just might have saved the Cavaliers’ bacon for the second time in the NCAA tournament.

Clark, the shortest man on the floor at 5-foot-9, likely won the Gardner-Webb game last week in Columbia, then played some hair-chested minutes (36:40 of them to be exact) on both ends of the floor against the Ducks. Clark was the Cavaliers’ second-leading scorer with 12 points (3 of 8 from the arc), as he tied career highs in points, assists (six), 3-pointers (three), and minutes.

Meanwhile, he contained Oregon point guard Payton Pritchard, the Ducks’ leading scorer on the season, who went 3 for 12 shooting and only 1 of 6 on 3-point tries.

Clark picked the right time to have his best performance of the season.

Sure, the Ducks, led by four starters all 6-foot-9 other than Pritchard, may have given Clark a little more daylight, instead choosing to overplay Jerome and Guy, the Cavaliers’ most dangerous 3-point shooters. Still, ya gotta make ‘em, right?

“Yeah, just trying to take my open shot when teams try to play off of me, and then if I can hit a couple, that frees up Ty and Kyle,” the freshman answered.

In a game that was billed as a rock fight between two of the nation’s top 15 defenses, it didn’t take a lot to swing the outcome to either side. With Clark stepping up, and junior center Mamadi Diakite coming through big-time, Virginia would have been flying home otherwise.

Oregon’s defense was so unique that Bennett wasn’t quite sure how to solve it. In fact, Jerome said it was so confusing that he didn’t think Virginia ever cracked the code the entire 40 minutes.

“Whether it’s a match-up zone or a switching man, it’s something you don’t see a lot of in how they do it,” Bennett attempted to explain. “We never really solved it offensively.”

Diakite, who is playing with the most confidence of his life, gained his second consecutive start against a more mobile lineup of Ducks than less-mobile regular starter Jack Salt could handle.

The 6-9 Diakite was a warrior against the plethora of rangy Ducks. As Virginia won the battle of the boards (34-31), it was Diakite who provided the grit, fighting for a career-high 11 rebounds to go along with seven points, two blocked shots, and a headbutt with Oregon’s Ehab Amin over a span of 35 minutes, 32 seconds.

“Mamadi’s rebound was significant,” Bennett said. “We needed that.”

In a slugfest, every punch counts.