After Virginia stole a buzzer-beater victory in Winston-Salem on Tuesday night, Wake Forest felt robbed. But Louisville? The Cardinals left their game with the Hoos humbled. In a matchup of top 20 teams, No. 11 UVA led wire to wire in a 63-47 win against No. 16 Louisville.
The 16-point margin of defeat is the worst ever for the Cards at the KFC Yum! Center and it was their first loss of the season at home. It marked just the program’s 14th loss in the building over six years in the building. It’s also UVA’s largest winning margin in a road game against a ranked opponent since the 1995 team won 83-60 at Georgia Tech.
”You’ve got to give Virginia a lot of credit, they played a great defensive game and executed beautifully on offense,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. ”Unfortunately I saw this day coming and I’m not too pleased with it, but I thought it was going to happen. Not quite as bad as the way we played, but I did see it coming just by the way we played defense against Virginia Tech and the way we played defense in practice. … We turned the ball over too much. They played like an experienced team. We played like a lot of inexperienced guys that didn’t know what they were in for.”
The Cardinals – and perhaps the Cavaliers too – couldn’t have known what was coming Saturday. Virginia, after all, had struggled mightily in ACC road games, losing at Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, and Florida State at the start of conference play. Earlier in the week, UVA finally snapped that road skid with a 72-71 win at Wake Forest, but it still wasn’t a strong performance as the Demon Deacons shot 53.5%, the highest number allowed by the Virginia defense this season. Plus, the Hoos rallied with a trio of 3-pointers in the final 17 seconds to overcome a seven-point deficit and win in highly improbable fashion as Darius Thompson unintentionally banked in a shot off the glass as time expired. UVA had trailed for the final 16:42 of the game until that shot gave them the victory.
So with that past as prologue, who could see Saturday’s show coming? The Hoos scored in just 19 seconds and built a double-digit lead less than 11 minutes into the game. Louisville, which needed almost 15 minutes to crack the 10-point barrier, cut that double-digit deficit to nine points for all of 31 seconds before Virginia surged again. By halftime, UVA led 29-14 and the Cardinals never threatened as the Wahoos’ lead hovered in the 20-point range throughout the second half.
That lead built behind what was arguably the Cavaliers’ best defensive performance of the season. They held the Cardinals to 14 points in the first half, the lowest mark of the season for an opponent. UVA also allowed just 21% shooting in the first half (4-19), the lowest mark in either half for an opponent this season. At one point in the first half, the Cards went scoreless for 7:34 as they missed seven shots and committed four turnovers. Louisville ended up 32.7% from the field and 36.4% from 3-point range with 18 turnovers. Damion Lee had just 6 points, while Trey Lewis had 4. Anas Mahmoud had only 1 point and Jaylen Johnson did not score as the Card starters combined for 20 points on 5-of-26 shooting (19.2%).
Virginia coach Tony Bennett said he told the players before the game that they could still put together strong defensive outings, but would they? The hosts produced just four fastbreak points and nine second chance points.
”We really challenged them to on the front end and back end to be as close to great as you can be, meaning that [give] everything you’ve got to make them play against a set defense” Bennett said. ”On the front end, Louisville is so potent when they get out and go. And then on the back end, we talked about being a one and done team. Rebounding the ball, be great with your blockouts, pursue, and everybody gang rebound. If you can do that and then do the stuff in between, being sound with ball screen defense and trapping the post. That’s where it’s got to start. It was our most complete game and our guys didn’t get stretched.”
That defensive effort was relentless in Pitino’s eyes.
”At the end of the game, two things really impressed me about them,” Pitino said. ”They were up 20 and [Malcolm] Brogdon is yelling in front of our bench to his teammates, ‘Just get one stop guys, just get one stop!’ Then on a sideline out of bounds play up 20, their hands immediately went up and you couldn’t see the option that was wide open in the corner. That’s a well drilled defensive team and those are the little things that we’re missing. Our mentality is to score. Their mentality is to execute and stop and they deserve all the credit. Obviously we got our brains beat in because we have that wrong mentality.”
It wasn’t just a defensive dissection, though. Virginia picked apart Louisville on the offensive end too. The Cavaliers shot 57.8% (26-45) from the field and 38.5% from 3-point range (5-13). It is the eighth time this season that they passed 55% shooting. They dished out 14 assists on the 26 made shots. The Cardinals have allowed just 36.9% shooting this season.
UVA spread the wealth to break down Louisville’s matchup zone, which floats between full-fledged man-to-man principles and zone principles within possessions. Anthony Gill and Brogdon were the only two Hoos in double figures with 13 points each, but London Perrantes and Mike Tobey added 9 each too followed by Marial Shayok’s 6. Brogdon and Perrantes were the only two players below 50% shooting as Brogdon made 6 of 13 shots (46.2%) and Perrantes hit 2 of 5 (40%) as he attempted only 3-point shots. Gill had 6 rebounds and Tobey added 4. Perrantes had 5 assists and just 2 turnovers.
Brogdon, meanwhile, recorded 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, and 1 blocked shot to go with his 13 points. Brogdon (1,499) passed Donald Hand (1,486) for 18th place on the program’s all-time scoring list.
”The guys had to be freed up to play offensively,” Bennett said. ”That’s such a hard matchup zone. … We said the perimeter guys have to make some plays and so will the bigs and they have to have some freedom to get it with a little bit of movement.”
