Virginia men’s basketball group missing bench production heading into NCAA Tournament
Jay Huff had been here earlier than, flying thru the air, primed to unharness his 7-foot-1 body on the opponent’s rim with a damn one-exceeded dunk. Except for this time, he had an unwelcome visitor. Florida State ahead Mfiondu Kabengele had observed the Virginia forward’s direction, and when Huff reached his apex, Kabengele smacked the ball off the rim. As the Seminoles scooped up the free ball and chugged down the court, Huff crashed to the hardwood, 232 kilos of frustration, and smacked the ground together with his right hand. “I become trying to score. He made an awesome play,” Huff said, pausing. “It is what it is.” There became less than 5 mins last in Virginia’s ACC Tournament semifinal Friday. At the same time, Huff came up empty, and the Cavaliers trailed through eleven points, a strangely large deficit for Coach Tony Bennett’s team. There had been many reasons for Florida State’s sixty nine-59 victory, but perhaps nothing stood out on the container score extra than the bench factors. Florida State 28, Virginia eight. “They have been so balanced of their scoring,” Bennett said. Virginia did have three double-digit scorers: guards De’Andre Hunter (13 points), Kyle Guy (eleven factors), and Ty Jerome (10 points).
But not one of the three engineered the kind of game-shifting run the Cavaliers wanted; Jerome didn’t score in the first 1/2. In the average season, Bennett frequently championed his team’s versatility and depth. The scoring got here from multitudinous sources. There became Jan. 5, when Braxton Key, the crew’s leading rebounder, scored 20 points against Florida State. Huff poured in 12 factors in 17 mins on Feb. 23 at Louisville. Forward Mamadou Diakite dropped 18 factors at Boston College on Jan. Nine. No one stepped into the vacuum Friday. Key scored four elements. Diakite scored 3. Huff scored one.
“Balanced scoring, that’s what that they had against us, is constantly very tough. And we weren’t, I didn’t think we had been as productive or as green, of course, offensively,” Bennett stated. The teacher said he changed into a greater upset with his team’s defense. After protecting the Seminoles to 34.1 percent shooting in a 65-fifty two win on Jan five, Virginia allowed Florida State to shoot fifty-six. Five percentage Friday. Still, the shortage of production from the bench could be an alarming fashion for the Cavaliers, with the beginning of the NCAA Tournament just days away. Virginia’s seat scored only 9 points in Thursday’s win over N.C. State within the quarterfinal.
Guy lifted the Wahoos past the Wolfpack with 29 factors, but his photographs weren’t falling at quite the same clip Friday, and Jerome struggled for the second one sport in a row. The Cavaliers became Hunter late, and the redshirt sophomore had a few fulfillment scoring out of the high post. But the Seminoles, who had nine gamers log as a minimum 11 minutes, had constructed a lead too sturdy to triumph over, as Huff found out firsthand while he rose for that overdue dunk.
