After watching the Virginia basketball team rally to win from a double-digit deficit last month, Georgia Tech entered Wednesday’s rematch with an upset in mind. To get there, the Yellow Jackets focused on the one-two combination of Sam Hauser and Jay Huff, who had teamed up for 40 points in the first meeting. That plan didn’t work either.
The Cavaliers once again came from behind to down the Jackets, this time riding behind others on the court to get to the 57-49 victory. That propelled UVA to 14-3 overall and a 10-1 mark in the ACC. The Wahoos have won 10 or more league games for the ninth straight season.
“Some other teams have had done that a little bit lately to a certain extent, but with them putting [Jose] Alvarado on Sam and almost, it wasn’t like a triangle-and-two, but they were not going to leave those guys,” Virginia coach Tony Bennett said. “… I kind of just tried to wind our guys up at halftime saying, ‘throw caution to the wind, but be sound, but be aggressive. You got to go make some plays, you got to go make some plays. You got to get into the paint, and Kihei [Clark] shoot it. If they go onto the screen let it ride and shoot it’. And he did that. I thought he played terrific and our defense held us in there in the first half. We needed it because we were struggling, and it held us kept us attached. Then we started going and it was just one of those games that was you know really hard fought.”
GT refused to let Hauser and Huff to get comfortable as the hosts committed to limiting the touches for the duo. Hauser, who had 22 points in the first meeting, ended up with 8 points this time around. Huff posted 18 points in the first matchup, but posted only 6 in Atlanta. That forced other players to step up to counter the strategy. Trey Murphy III and Kihei Clark rose to the occasion in a big way.
In the early going, Murphy did the heavy lifting. He scored 13 points in the first half. That included putting up the first 7 points of the game for Virginia on a 3-pointer and a pair of layups.
Murphy also knocked down a huge shot late in the game to help the Hoos separate for good. With Tech showing a 1-3-1 zone for a possession out of a media timeout, the Cavaliers hit Huff on the elbow and he quickly pinged the ball back out to the corner where Murphy fired away. That 3-pointer doubled the lead to 51-45 with 4:04 to go and the Yellow Jackets never got closer than that again.
The junior finished with 18 points on 7-11 shooting, including 2-4 shooting behind the arc. He’s sitting at 48% shooting from 3-point range on the season. Murphy added 5 rebounds, 1 assist, and 1 blocked shot. In the first meeting, he had just 3 points on a single make from downtown.
“The mindset overall is always to be aggressive,” Murphy said, “and they pointed out that on when we are playing ‘sides’ [motion], they’re going to be really hugged up on Sam so I can get a lot of easy curls to the basket, and I can get a lot more scoring opportunities because there’s no help on Sam’s. So, yeah, in a sense, we see that, and we make adjustments.”
While Murphy had it going early, Clark answered the call in the second half. After posting only 2 points in the previous 60 minutes against GT (2 points on 1-10 shooting in the first meeting and a scoreless first half on 0-4 shooting Wednesday), the junior guard finally the range in the second half of the second meeting. That started with a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer in the first three minutes and continued even after an airball midway through the half brought out the chants from a limited student section at McCamish Pavilion.
That once again included the go-ahead shot against the Yellow Jackets. He pulled up around the free throw line for a jumper and a 45-44 lead at the 5:26 mark. Clark followed that up with a 3-pointer on the next possession and Murphy’s triple moments later extended the lead further. Clark finished with 14 points, which were powered by 4-8 shooting from 3-point range. That matched his career-high for triples. He had 6 assists and 3 rebounds too.
“When we went in at halftime, everybody was talking, and I talked to Kihei as well and I told him ‘Look, they’re going go [under] and be like that, shoot the ball,’” Murphy said. “We’ve been working all summer, offseason, as well as preseason on his jump shot and he was knocking it down very consistently. I had confidence in Kihei, and we had to make sure that he knew that. Coach Bennett, he came back after he spoke at halftime and told Kihei he likes those shots and he really wants to shoot the ball and it paid [off], it was great for us in the second half.”
“It’s nice to see the ball go through the rim,” Clark said. “They stayed in my corner through the whole game, just told me to keep shooting with confidence. So I made some shots and it feels good to pull that one out.”
Virginia picked up 7 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 blocks from Reece Beekman, while Tomas Woldetensae logged 4 points in 18 minutes. The Yellow Jackets limited Hauser and Huff in the scoring column, but those two had solid nights elsewhere on the stat sheet. Hauser tallied 10 rebounds, 5 assists, and 1 steal. Huff added 9 rebounds, 4 blocked shots, 1 assist, and 1 steal.
Those two played a key role defensively too as the Hoos clamped down and held Tech below 50 points. Hauser picked up the assignment on Usher for much of the second half after the GT forward got it going a little bit in the first half. He finished with 12 points, but only 3 points after halftime on 1-5 shooting. Huff, meanwhile, spent a lot of the night bothering Moses Wright (8 points on 4-11 shooting) and erasing shots at the rim. The blocked shots at the rim covered up for breakdowns elsewhere at times.
Georgia Tech finished at 36% shooting overall (18-50) and just 19% from 3-point range (4-21). Jose Alvarado led the way with 18 points on 7-12 shooting, but the Cavaliers slowed down the other backcourt threats much like the first meeting. Michael Devoe and Bubba Parham combined for 7 points on 2-14 shooting in Atlanta after going for 6 points on 2-10 shooting in Charlottesville in January.
“They are such a good three-point shooting team and they spread you out, you had to really slide and protect,” Bennett said. ”We got backdoored a couple times and had some breakdowns. … But I thought that defensively, it felt, I’ll watch the film, it felt like there was more of a fight and more second, third, fourth efforts, which is required on the defensive end.”
