The Virginia basketball team continued its season-opening winning streak in the ACC with a pair of home wins against Georgia Tech and Syracuse. The Hoos have started the schedule 7-0 and have the lead in the standings in the early going. The Double Bonus returns to look at the latest victories.

Clark Carving ‘Em Up

One of the key pieces of Monday night’s win against Syracuse was how Kihei Clark repeatedly slid into vacant bubbles near the high post in Syracuse’s zone. From there, he facilitated high quality attempts for teammates over and over again. That included some easy and entertaining dunks on passes from Clark to Jay Huff and Trey Murphy III as they cut behind the back line of the zone. In the end, Clark finished with 9 assists. That accounted for 31% of Virginia’s 29 made shots.

The performance against the Orange was not a one-game flash, though. It came on the heels of the Georgia Tech game where Clark handed out 8 assists. In fact, he just put together one of the best four-game stretches of the Tony Bennett era for helpers. Against Notre Dame, Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Syracuse, Clark rolled up 28 assists (7.0 assists per game) as UVA scored 80+ points in three of those games.

How does that compare to other four-game bursts of assists during conference play in the Bennett era? Clark had a stretch last season that topped it (and if you do the first four ACC games last year that were spread out on the calendar, he had another stretch of 28 in four conference games), while London Perrantes and Ty Jerome each had a better stretch of ACC assists once in their careers too. Jontel Evans had one stretch of 27 assists in four games in the same neighborhood as these strings. In terms of non-con games, you also might remember a little four-game stretch in 2019 from Oregon to Texas Tech where Jerome ended up with 27 assists in some important games.

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