Virginia Falters On Road At Virginia Tech

The Virginia basketball team had put together nearly a calendar year without an ACC loss. The Hoos had been on a roll offensively in recent games. The defense had been showing signs of steady improvement too. On Saturday night in Blacksburg, however, that all collapsed in the second half and Virginia Tech surged late to win the top 20 showdown, 65-51.

The loss stopped a 15-game ACC winning streak for the Cavaliers, a run that started against Notre Dame on Feb. 11 last season. The last previous loss came at Louisville on Feb. 8, 2020. The Hoos’ first loss in league play dropped them to 7-1 in the ACC with a one-game lead in the loss column against the Hokies and others.

“Credit to them. They defended hard. They ran their offense purposefully and hard,” UVA coach Tony Bennett said. “I thought we were good in stretches and then I thought we lacked assertiveness offensively with our cuts, assertiveness driving, trying to score, and then defensively, kind of laid down and that’s not going to get it done. Finesse does not work in this league. And we looked very finesse-y today.”

Virginia took control of the game late in the first half as it held VT without points for the final 6:10 and the advantage grew to 10 points in the early moments of the second half. The lead still sat at 42-34 when Sam Hauser hit a 3-pointer with 13:18 to play. What had been a reasonably steady 25 minutes, buoyed somewhat by late clock 3-point shooting, however, unraveled quickly and the Hoos couldn’t recover.

After shooting 46.7% on 3’s (7-15) in the first half, that plummeted to 23.1% (3-13) in the second half. Hauser’s triple ended up being the final make of the night as the Wahoos missed their final eight attempts behind the arc. Once that well ran dry, UVA struggled to generate enough good opportunities otherwise. Virginia Tech moved Virginia off its spots as it tried to work the mid-post area, which had been successful for most of this month in other games, and then chased cutters or dribblers around screens repeatedly when the offense looked for other answers.

Trey Murphy III got a dunk on a backdoor cut and Jay Huff when he tipped in his own miss at the 8:25 mark as the Wahoos tried to fend off a Hokie rally, but those flashes were exceptions on this night. After Huff’s bucket, the Cavaliers didn’t score for 7:13 and the team’s last four points in the final 1:12 came once the outcome was already determined. The final 10 minutes felt like an offensive meltdown as players tried to make things happen with solo moves to the rim.

Four different players landed in double figures for UVA. Huff led the way with 13 points and Kihei Clark had 11 points, all of which came in the first half. Hauser and Murphy posted 10 points each. Unlike the recent surge of 80-point games – the Cavaliers had hit that mark in three of the previous four games – those double-digit outings were on the low end vs. 20-point bursts and the surrounding cast added little with just 7 more points from Casey Morsell (4), Justin McKoy (2), and Reece Beekman (1) combined.

The Hoos shot 36.5% for the game and a rough 29.6% in the second half. There weren’t any easy ones to be found either as they managed just 2 second chance points, 2 fastbreak points, and earned only 4 free throw attempts (3-4).

“Virginia Tech’s defense, they got to some shooters quick, they kind of closed the lane down, and obviously shots, we didn’t shoot it as well as we did,” Bennett said. “It wasn’t as free flowing. It was a little more, it was more physical. There was just more physicality. When we were trying to move to get open off cuts, they bodied us and that seemed to, it just seemed it didn’t let us run the offense that we should’ve. We needed to be more assertive and run aggressively and embrace that. If that’s how the game’s going to be, then you’ve got to figure out how to cut harder, screen harder, move harder, and you can’t expect to just be able to go where you want. That’s where I thought we needed to be more assertive in all areas of the offensive part.”

With the offense wilting down the stretch, the defense didn’t help survive the drought. At one point, the Hokies uncorked a 19-0 run to overcome a 47-44 deficit and turn it into a 63-47 lead. That burst began with a Hunter Cattoor 3-pointer, but like much of the rest of the game, it also featured Keve Aluma heavily. He had a traditional 3-point play at the 6:25 mark, a bucket at 5:57, and another at 5:14 as a personal 7-point run. Then Cattoor hit another triple that was assisted by Aluma as well.

That flurry was part of a 60.9% shooting effort (14-23) in the second half that included a 70% (7-10) outburst from 3-point range. The Hokies entered the game at 33.8% shooting from downtown, but they had shown the ability to get hot in stretches too. That strong half boosted VT’s overall shooting to 50% (22-44) for the game and from 3-point range (9-18).

Aluma’s fingerprints were all over Tech’s offensive success. He dominated almost every matchup thrown his way, giving Huff problems early and Francisco Caffaro and Sam Hauser trouble later. Post doubles didn’t work consistently – he even beat one trap solo by spinning away from it and scoring. In the end, Aluma finished with 29 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 1 blocked shot. He made 10 of 15 shots overall, 2 of 3 triples, and 7 of 8 free throws.

Cattoor added 15 points, while Wabissa Bede and Jalen Cone chipped in 7 and 6, respectively.

Bennett again sounded like he thought his team was tentative in a lot of ways.

“It’s never for the full 40 minutes but you just can’t have big gaps where you’re not getting stops or being assertive enough,” Bennett said. “It was too easy for them to post up, do things and then make some plays and we just weren’t right. And boy let that be a lesson because you can’t survive like that. So again, we’ll try to grow from it. There were stretches we got a lead, we ran some good stuff, had stretches of good defense, I’ll always acknowledge that. But, either a half of basketball or a part of basketball doesn’t work, it has to be start to finish. We knew Virginia Tech was going bring, in a rivalry game, you’re going get their best shot so can we give them our best shot? Partly due to them, partly due to us we did not do that for long enough to win enough possessions. At all. They just sort of got momentum and we couldn’t hang on.”

Final Stats