Players on the Virginia men’s basketball team have adopted a “road warriors” mentality this season and all season long they have grabbed wins away from home. Add the fabled Carrier Dome to the list.
The Cavaliers won a school-record 11th true road game with a 59-47 victory at Syracuse on Monday night. As a result, the Hoos clinched the outright ACC Regular Season Championship for the second straight year. UVa is the first school to go back to back outside the state of North Carolina and only the second team other than Duke or UNC to accomplish that feat, joining NC State in that exclusive club.
“It was significant to even get a share of it on Saturday but then to get it outright in back-to-back years with these guys – I use the word and I keep saying it, but I’m so thankful,” Cavalier coach Tony Bennett told reporters. “Because these young men have stayed true to their identity as a team and they really – you have to really trust what we’re doing and they’ve done that. They’ve found ways and that’s remarkable to me in a very good conference with great depth.”
Monday’s win certainly required some of that ‘find a way’ resilience. UVa trailed 13-2 thanks to an abysmal start that saw the Hoos go scoreless for the first 8 minutes and make only one basketball in the first 13:55. In fact, Virginia committed 10 turnovers in the first 10 minutes and missed 10 of its first 11 shots.
For much of that time, Syracuse’s 2-3 zone perplexed the Cavaliers as they rarely got the ball below the free throw line or near the high post. Bennett described the offense as tentative and stiff. Finally, Evan Nolte snapped the malaise with a 3-pointer from two steps behind the line at the 6:05 mark. That jump-started a surge that propelled Virginia to a 23-20 halftime lead.
“That was big,” Bennett told reporters when asked about Nolte’s early 3-pointer. “You’ve got to make some shots against the zone and you’ve got to get some offensive rebounds. The more you miss, the more tight you get. You could see we were like scarecrows with the ball. You could feel it and we tried to get it going during the timeouts, but you needed a bucket. … I don’t know how far it was. I couldn’t tell. It looked like a long three. I was like ‘OK, whew.'”
That straw quickly turned to mettle. After the long drought to open the game, the Wahoos actually scored 21 points in the final 6:05 of the half. The Cavaliers followed Nolte’s big shot with a renewed sense of urgency as Malcolm Brogdon and London Perrantes found ways to drive against the zone. The uptick in aggressiveness led to a flurry of dunks, offensive rebounds, and another 3-pointer.
Brogdon corralled a loose ball and attacked for a two-handed dunk. Perrantes drove and missed a shot, but Mike Tobey tipped it in for two points. Moments later, Perrantes knocked down a long triple. Tobey scored on another tip-in before a Virginia steal led to a Brogdon transition dunk that made the score 20-16 in Syracuse’s favor. Anthony Gill joined the fray with a traditional 3-point play that featured a loose ball offensive rebound, a tough bucket, and a free throw. The Wahoos finally took the lead for good when Perrantes drove and passed off to Tobey for a two-handed dunk with 1:11 to go before the half.
The offensive momentum carried through to start the second half too. Nolte and Brogdon sandwiched 3-pointers around a Gill jumper and by the 16:00 mark, the lead had grown to double figures.
Gill led all scorers with 17 points on 8-of-11 shooting. Brogdon, Perrantes, and Tobey added 10 points each. Perrantes also finished with 10 assists and only 1 turnover. Add in 6 points from both Nolte and Darion Atkins and it was another night of balanced scoring. The Hoos shot 46.2% from the field.
“Against the zone, we had to be able to create off the dribble and not just rely on 3-pointers,” Perrantes told reporters. “Once we found some crevices in the zone, we tried to get in there and give the big men the ball.”
“London started driving and we started getting some things going and we realized we can really get back in this,” Bennett told reporters. “That’s hard on the opposing team. When you have such a swing, get out to a big lead and then all of a sudden we get back. That’s a hard one momentum swing to absorb from Syracuse’s standpoint. I knew that if we just keep plugging and keep making it hard on them defensively, we’ll have a chance.”
Virginia stuck to its defensive foundation in that regard by making it tough for the Orange to find a groove. That’s how the Cavaliers stayed in the game early despite their sluggish start on offense. In the end, Syracuse shot only 38.3% on 18-of-47 shooting. That included a tough night from behind the 3-point line where the hosts hit 21.1% on 4-of-19 shooting.
The Hoos also dominated the glass on both ends of the floor and ended up with a 42-20 edge in that category. Gill had 9 rebounds, including 7 on the offensive glass, while Atkins added 9 more. Tobey snared 8 rebounds and Perrantes had 5 of his own on the defensive end. Virginia outscored Cuse 15-6 on second-chance points as a result.
“I just don’t think we competed on the backboards like we have all year,” Orange coach Jim Boeheim told reporters. “I just thought that was the difference. … The real story in the basketball game – I mean 42-20 on the boards, that’s all it takes. … If we had rebounded, it would have been a different game but it still would have been a difficult game to win.”
Beating Virginia has proven to be difficult all season long and the Cavaliers are 28-1 for the first time in program history. They’ve also been at the top of the ACC standings for two straight seasons. After winning the league with a 16-2 regular season mark a year ago, the Hoos are 16-1 this season with one game to play. UVa is the first team to win 16 regular season ACC games in back-to-back seasons.
The Wahoos took some time to savor their repeat before getting back to business later this week at Louisville.
“Great,” Brogdon told reporters when asked about winning the regular season again. “We’ve won it before, but you win it a new way every time so it’s definitely gratifying to win another one.”
