The stockings may be hung by the chimney with care, but Virginia showed little care in dribbling and passing the basketball Tuesday night at Memphis. The Cavaliers committed a season-high 18 turnovers and generally struggled to do much of anything on offense as the Tigers rolled to a 77-54 win.
UVA’s consistent miscues not only subtracted from its own scoring opportunities, but also fueled Memphis’ offense for much of the night. The hosts recorded 27 points off those turnovers to own a 19-point advantage in that category alone. Even when the Hoos did manage to hold on to the ball, they could not put it in the basket with a rough shooting night that eventually finished at 39.3% overall (22-56) and 21.1% from 3-point range (4-19).
Virginia coach Tony Bennett joked with Jimmy Miller in that postgame interview about the game being a lump of coal as his team takes a holiday break before returning to the John Paul Jones Arena next week.
“Those players and the staff, what they did to us, that pressure they put on us in transition, on the glass, and all those areas,” Bennett said in his postgame media session with reporters. “What do you say to your team? … We talked about the soundness and the toughness factor. We’ve got to take a look at that and figure some things out, but not a good way to go into break. But again, a valuable learning experience and we’ll see what we do with it. Who knows how we’ll respond?”
UVA has started sluggishly in four straight halves so one thing to figure out is how to rejuvenate or manufacture some offense. Against Northeastern on Saturday, the Cavaliers trailed 16-4 in the first 8:15 and then gave up a 7-0 run in the first 2:04 after intermission too. They managed to overcome that on the way to a 2-point win over the weekend, but there was no rally in the cards on the road Tuesday night.
Memphis blitzed the Hoos out of the gates to the tune of a 13-1 lead in the first 3:48 of action, which included 2 layups and a trio of 3-pointers. Virginia had 2 turnovers in that stretch, but still managed to claw back to 29-28 late in the half thanks to a pair of mini runs. The Tigers led 38-32 at intermission.
When the script repeated itself to start the second half, however, the Wahoos could not mount a charge. Memphis held a small 9-5 edge in the opening 3:21 of the second half, but that grew the margin back to double digits and one last rally short-circuited with more turnovers as the Tigers led by 10+ for the final 12 minutes.
How badly did it unravel? From the 14:33 mark of the second half through 8:56 remaining, the Hoos committed 6 turnovers and missed 4 3-pointers alongside a missed layup. What was a 47-42 game at the time ballooned to a 64-44 deficit to the delight of the FedEx Forum faithful.
“Their plan is to make you make plays off the dribble and disrupt,” Bennett said. “Obviously, Reece [Beekman] has the ability to do that and everyone else for us struggled in that regard. Then they really started to try to take it out of Reece’s hands or deny and switch everything and again be disruptive. I think when that happened, when they made some plays with their athleticism and disrupted us, then all of the sudden we made some uncharacteristic [plays]. We couldn’t even dribble past, make a simple play, and that just sort of snowballed and they took advantage.”
Much like the game back at home Saturday when Beekman scored a career-high 21 points, he tried to carry the Cavaliers into contention in this game. He ended up with 13 points on 5-8 shooting with 4 assists, but the Tigers decided that they would not let him operate freely. They ran double teams his way often, switched and bothered when they didn’t, and really tried to force other players to handle decisions.
As Bennett noted, that didn’t go particularly well. Andrew Rohde did manage to produce 4 assists with 1 turnover, but he never looked comfortable really and went 0-5 shooting for a scoreless night. Isaac McKneely, meanwhile, had 4 turnovers while shooting 1-8 from the field on the way to 6 points. Elijah Gertrude posted 4 points on 2-5 shooting with 3 turnovers.
The only players to join Beekman in double figures were Jake Groves, who had 12 points and 0 turnovers, and Ryan Dunn, who tallied a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds with 1 turnover.
With the offense sputtering and helping lead to Memphis points, Virginia also lost its footing defensively. David Jones gave UVA the most fits with 26 points on 8-15 shooting, but Caleb Mills (11 points), Jahvon Quinerly (9 points), and Malcolm Dandridge (9 points) all had some productivity too.
Memphis shot 46.4% overall (26-56) and 48.3% in the second half (14-29); the hosts also knocked down 39.1% on 3’s (9-23). Between the forced turnovers (15 steals) and the ability to drive, the Tigers had the Wahoos “guessing” at times on defense according to Bennett. The issues included giving up three layups on baseline out of bounds plays, which rarely happens to the Hoos.
Ultimately, every counting category came up in double digits for Memphis and that is tough to overcome. The Tigers had 32 points in the paint, 12 second chance points, 11 fastbreak points, 23 bench points, and the aforementioned 27 points off turnovers. That combination will leave Virginia with plenty to learn in the coming practices.
“In every area, they were kind of taking it to us,” Bennett said. “So this won’t be a fun film to watch, but there will be a lot to certainly teach from. That’s why you want to come in and play a team in this setting. I know we’ve got work to do and we’ll use it in the right way.”
Team just isn’t very good on defense the last several games and has only one real ball handler. Inside this is the weakest team in the TB era
Don’t agree with the weakest team description but they will be up/down all season. As
mcKneeley goes, so goes the Wahoos. He was terrible last night.
This is a very young team but rather the lumps now than late January on.
I’m afraid there will be lumps all year as this team seems to live or die solely off the three point shot like so many teams these days. Do away with the three and bring back the jump ball like in “the good ole days.”