Virginia learned of its NCAA Tournament fate on Sunday and drew the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region. The Cavaliers will play their opening game in Raleigh, N.C., against No. 16 seed Hampton on Thursday at approximately 3 p.m. A potential Saturday contest awaits between the winner of No. 8 seed Texas Tech and No. 9 seed Butler.
UVA coach Tony Bennett isn’t taking the weekend and the round of 32 for granted, though. He said during a teleconference Sunday night that you have to lock your focus on each game and not on the whole bracket. The fact that No. 1 seeds are 124-0 against No. 16 seeds doesn’t matter with the growing parity in college basketball, particularly in a year where everyone in the field picked up numerous losses throughout the season. The No. 1’s – Kansas (30-4), UNC (28-6), Virginia (26-7), and Oregon (28-6) – have the most combined losses among top seeds in the history of the tournament.
”You have to play well,” Bennett said. ”You have to take one game at a time and try to go get it because everyone is capable. It’s just that way now. That’s why you’ve got to be playing good basketball coming into this because no one is untouchable. I don’t think we believe that about ourselves.”
The Cavaliers feature a host of experienced players with seniors Malcolm Brogdon, Anthony Gill, Mike Tobey, and Evan Nolte leading the charge, but they won’t necessarily have an experience edge against the Pirates. Hampton features 8 seniors on its roster with 5 of them among the team’s 6 leading scorers.
That includes 6’2” senior Reginald Johnson, a fifth-year senior that transferred from Miami of Ohio. He averages a team-leading 18.3 points, partially based on his ability to get the free throw line. He’s made 138 of 192 free throws (71.9%) this season. Fellow seniors, 6’6” Quinton Chievous and 6’2” Brian Darden, are also in double figures for the season as part of a strong three-guard foundation. Chievous averages 17.0 points, while Darden averages 13.2. None of that trio is a major 3-point shooting threat (Darden’s 33.5% is tops among the three), though, so the question will be whether they can get off two-point shots against the Pack-Line defense.
”We’re playing a team in Hampton that is a team that won in the NCAA Tournament last year, won their league this year, and their conference tournament,” Bennett said. ”I think their top six players are seniors. Well coached. They’re good.”
The Pirates have been here before after winning the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Tournament as the No. 6 seed in 2015. That earned them a ‘First Four’ spot against Manhattan, a game they won 74-64. Johnson and Chievous logged 15 points each in that game, while Darden added 13. The victory placed Hampton against top-seeded Kentucky in the 64-team field, a game the Wildcats won 79-56.
This season, coach Edward Joyner’s team has posted a 21-10 record overall and a 13-3 record that won the MEAC. The Pirates obviously won the MEAC Tournament as well to get an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. In terms of numbers, they rank 164th in the RPI, 228th in KenPom, and 242nd in Sagarin. They posted a 1-6 record against the RPI’s top 200.
The Hoos last faced the Pirates during the 2013-14 season and won 69-40 to improve to 7-0 all-time in the series. All those numbers aside, however, Coach Bennett doesn’t expect Hampton to be starry-eyed with Virginia even though it has spent most of the season ranked in the nation’s top 10.
”Winning your league and winning your conference tournament with experienced players tells you they’re playing good ball and they’re not going to be in awe of being in an NCAA Tournament or anything like that,” Bennett said.
