LOUISVILLE, KY. – Virginia basketball coach Tony Bennett turned to an old saying to describe his team’s 53-49 win against Oregon on Thursday night in the NCAA Tournament. With a twist.
“Ugly is in the eye of the beholder,” Bennett said. “Maybe it wasn’t great, but I thought it was pretty good looking for us defensively.”
The Cavaliers needed every ounce of that defense, aesthetics aside, to earn their second trip to the Elite Eight in Bennett’s tenure. That’s because the Ducks matched the defensive output step for step on the other end of the floor. Both teams shot below 40% for the game with UVA checking in at 35.7% and Oregon at 37.8%.
UVA leaned on its calling card more than ever in the final minutes. The Ducks took their final lead at 45-42 with 5:43 to go, thanks to an 11-2 run fueled by three 3-pointers from Louis King. With a fitting name and total in a city named after King Louis XVI, King finished with a game-high 16 points. The third triple in that flurry, however, ended up being Oregon’s final field goal of the night.
Virginia, which set a new program record for wins with its 32nd of the year, held the Ducks to just four points over the final 5:42 and all of those came from free throws. Oregon missed its final four shots and committed two turnovers, on steals from Ty Jerome and Mamadi Diakite, down the stretch. If you extend it out further, OU actually had just one field goal – King’s final 3 – over the last 8:31 of action. There were two more turnovers in there – a shot clock violation and an offensive foul drawn on a drive attempt – and another missed shot, pushing the stretch run to 1-of-6 shooting with four turnovers.
“I think we played great. We were communicating, we were scrambling, keeping guys in front, rebounding,” UVA’s De’Andre Hunter said. “We were doing all the things we practice every day. I mean, I think those last five minutes just shows how great we can be.”
“Just we were trying to be in position, trying to slide hard, make them shoot contested shots. One and done them,” Bennett said. “They got a shot up, rebound. Just fight for position. Just kept talking about just fight, just fight and don’t give them anything easy. And fatigue comes into it at the end. The shots aren’t quite as clean and as easy. I thought we did a good job of keeping the ball in front, helping each other, scrambling, as he said, and that’s – you know, that’s what helped us advance from being down in the first round and then we started scrambling and made it tough. Same thing against Oklahoma. And then I thought it carried over at least, you know, you watch tape and you’ll figure out if it was. But it felt like that’s what carried us to this point.”
“I did a really poor job,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said. “We’ve got to get better possessions than that. That’s my job. We got rushed a little bit there and just we had poor possessions. And I told the guys in the locker room, I let them down there. We needed to have some good possessions. We fought our way back. We were in good position, and offensively, you know, we had a couple turnovers, couple late shot clocks where we just threw it up. Just bad possessions. So disappointed there in myself, disappointed for the guys. We had a couple sets that we just didn’t execute. But we should have been in a better position than that, and we should have got better shots. I don’t want to take anything away from Virginia. They make a lot of people take bad shots. But we didn’t handle that very well.”
With the defense holding firm late in the game, the Hoos still needed a late blast of offense to advance. The Ducks, after all, took their first lead of the second half when King hit that shot at the 5:43 mark. UVA found what it needed with a pair of clutch 3-pointers to see-saw back in front and four late points from Hunter sealed the deal.
The first triple came as an immediate response to King’s lead-taking shot. Cavalier freshman Kihei Clark came off a screen on the right side, squared up, and let a 3-pointer fly that tied the game at 45-45 just 22 seconds later. After Hunter had a late-clock 3-point attempt blocked on the next possession, it was Jerome’s turn. He came off a screen to nearly the same spot on the floor and matched Clark’s bomb to give the Hoos the lead for good.
Prior to those two shots, the Cavaliers had been cold from deep. They had made just 7 of 28 triples, including three straight misses, when Clark sank his attempt and 8 of 30 when Jerome lifted his team back to the lead. The Hoos were 2 of 10 from 3-point range in the second half before those two critical buckets.
Neither player showed hesitation, though.
“No, I was open so I was just going to shoot my shot with confidence,” Clark said.
“Honestly, I’m thinking about the one I missed after that,” Jerome said. “That would have really sealed the game. I want that one back. But just we were starting doing a better job of moving and Kihei found me in the right spot and I think Dre or Mamadi set a great screen and my teammates did a great job of finding me in the right spot.”
While it was a low-scoring game, UVA did come through with a balanced effort. Four different players scored in double figures and the team logged 14 assists on 20 made field goals.
Jerome finished with a team-high 13 points to go along with 6 assists, 6 rebounds, and 2 steals. Clark, meanwhile, matched career highs with 12 points, 6 assists, and 3 3-pointers. He also had 4 rebounds. Hunter moved into double figures with an open layup when Guy passed out of a trap late and two free throws on a one-and-one trip in the final minute of a one-possession game. He had 11 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist. Guy shook off another rough shooting night (2-11 on 3’s) to post 10 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist.
Diakite, meanwhile, didn’t end up in double digits with 7 points, but he did pulled down a career-high 11 rebounds. That’s the third straight game he’s matched or set a new career high on the boards. He recorded 2 blocked shots as well.
That was enough offense against a man-to-man, matchup zone combo from Oregon to advance. Ugly or not.
“It was a hard-fought game. I think we won that with our defense, and then timely plays offensively were there,” Bennett said. “They’re tough defensively to figure out. We don’t play against that a lot. At times we struggled but made enough offensive plays but certainly rallied defensively … I can’t tell you how thankful and excited I am.”
Ugly? If you like kids driving and scoring at will against shoddy defenses, it was ugly. But if you prefer the full measure of a game, in which both sides fiercely protect their baskets while trading blow for blow and miss for miss offensively, with one team left standing at the end… it was the Sistine Chapel.