 |
|
Mike Scott poured in 17 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists in the win. |
While Mike Scott served as the offensive catalyst, Tony Bennett’s Pack-Line defense put the brakes on a previously full throttle Rider offense. The combination of the two resulted in an impressive, to say the least, 79-46 Virginia victory in the Cancun Challenge on Thursday. The 33-point victory is clearly the best performance to date in the early stages of Bennett’s tenure at UVa where his team stands at 2-1 on the young 2009-2010 season.
Undoubtedly, there will be an ebb and flow to the Cavaliers’ performance in Bennett’s first season, but the progress shown in just one week is somewhat startling. Better shooting, increasingly consistent defense, more assists than turnovers and not letting up on a big lead – all of those categories showed improvement from the home opener with Longwood last Friday. Not surprisingly, that led to a stronger effort against Rider, a team that knocked off Mississippi State on the road.
It’s safe to say that no one saw the result coming.
“I wasn’t expecting it to be this lopsided to be honest,” UVa guard Sammy Zeglinski said. “I thought we were going to have to fight because they have a lot of good shooters. Frankly, I thought we played really unselfish basketball and it went to Mike in the post and he did a great job of not trying to do too much against the double team and hit the open man and he played great for us. Sylven [Landesberg] was struggling because of foul trouble he was in I think so other people had to step up and I think a lot of people were right around 10 points. It was a good spread of points and I thought it was a good balanced game for us offensively.”
The Broncs, meanwhile, expected to win the game after a 2-0 start that included an SEC road win.
“You look at it now and you realized that maybe your kids were a little tight tonight because I think we came down here expecting to win,” Rider coach Tommy Dempsey said. “I think that’s a good thing, but I also think we felt pressure to win the game as well. We were a lot more loose on Friday night at Mississippi State and then all of a sudden you win that game and you win the next and you’re getting votes in the AP poll and everybody’s talking about how good you are and then all of the sudden the pressure mounts and you lay an egg. Virginia made us pay for that.”
Indeed, Virginia did make the visiting Broncs pay with a tough night in the John Paul Jones Arena. While Rider struggled to get comfortable on either end, Dempsey indicated that Scott’s interior presence helped the Hoos’ offense get going in the first half and that his team was never able to disrupt the rhythm the hosts established early. Scott posted 13 points in the first half on 6-of-6 shooting to go with 4 rebounds; that pushed the Cavaliers to a 36-22 advantage by the halftime buzzer. No other players cracked double figures before halftime, but the tone clearly had been set.
After intermission, the Broncs decided to focus even more of their efforts on Scott. It didn’t help. The Cavalier forward added 4 more points and 5 more rebounds, but did as much damage through passing the ball. With Rider aggressively double-teaming him on nearly every touch, Scott recorded 3 assists (he didn’t have any in the opening half) after the half by finding the right man out of the double team. And even when he didn’t get an official check in the assist column, Scott’s passing still sparked solid ball movement and good scoring opportunities for his teammates. In the end, the team shot 51.8% and produced 15 assists with just 10 turnovers; the Hoos had just 2 turnovers after halftime.
Bennett said that Scott shows good instincts for passing out of the post, while his teammates echoed those thoughts.
“He’s got a knack for that. It was just last week actually I was watching some practice tape and I said ‘boy, he really made some nifty passes,'” Bennett said. “When you can have a guy that can do that, it’s a great threat, especially with his footwork and his ability to make some plays down there. So I’m hopeful that’ll stay because he’ll have some big boys coming at him.”
“He’s an unselfish player. If he gets doubled in the post, he can see over the defense and is able to make a good pass,” UVa’s Calvin Baker said. “He definitely finds us if we’re open.”
Scott, meanwhile, said he just wanted to improve on what he considered a poor showing at South Florida. He posted just 9 points and 5 rebounds in 16 minutes against the Bulls before fouling out fairly early in the second half. Needless to say, Scott was much more effective in 28 minutes against the Broncs.
 |
|
Sammy Zeglinski and the Hoos held Rider to 46 points and 33.3% shooting. |
“I think that encouraged me for tonight – fouling out of that game, not having a really good game – to just come out and play hard tonight,” Scott said. “I guess I’m taking a pretty big responsibility [with scoring]. Sylven got into foul trouble so I just took upon myself to try to carry my team and help us win.”
Scott wasn’t the only one that found success on the defensive end. The Cavaliers as a whole put together an enormous effort on that end of the floor Thursday night. First, Virginia gave up just 46 points, which is more than 40 points less than the visitors’ season average of 87.0 per game. The Hoos held Rider to 27 total rebounds (7 offensive) to win that category by 15. They also gave up 0 fastbreak points and 0 second chance points. The Broncs shot just 33.3% from the field and 30.4% from the 3-point line.
In other words, Virginia posted a good effort across the board on defense, though, as always, there’s work to be done.
“It was better. I told you before that I thought we played a good first half against South Florida and the wheels didn’t come off in the second half defensively, but it wasn’t as good and I think the scoring droughts put too much pressure on us,” Bennett said. “Tonight, still some breakdowns but it was more solid. I have to watch the tape to see if it was them missing or us getting a hand in their face. I think a lot of times we were there and we plugged up the gaps and they couldn’t quite get the looks, but there were a number of breakdowns and we have to continue to improve in those areas when we lose vision.”
