Next Up - Virginia In Cameron
The Cavs are still a bit off, but this is still a dangerous team.
Next up for Duke is a visit from Tony Bennett’s Virginia.
Bennett has been a considerable success story in Charlottesville. Obviously the 2019 natty is the high point and that was, as far as we can think back, the most thrilling NCAA title drive of all time. The only thing close to it was NC State’s 1983 championship, but NC State beat Utah and Georgia comfortably.
In the ACC, Virginia has been really good, regularly winning the regular season. This year they won’t. Even if first-place UNC lost all three of its remaining games, the Tar Heels would own the tiebreaker.
And of course they’d have to win at Duke on Saturday, and that won’t be easy either.
Virginia has been erratic all season, not least of all on offense. Before beating Boston College 72-68 on Saturday, the Cavs had scored 63 against Pitt, 49 against Wake Forest, 41 against Virginia Tech and 44 against UNC.
All save Wake Forest were losses.
And while Virginia got praise for breaking out to score 72 against BC, lost in that discussion was this: how the heck did Boston College score 68 on the ACC’s toughest defense? We admire Earl Grant’s program, but it’s hardly an offensive juggernaut. Virginia kind of won by outscoring BC, and that cannot have made Bennett very happy.
Bennett, who might have made a great endodontist had he not gone into coaching, has made suppressing scoring into something of a fetish in Charlottesville. Fans get very excited when an opponent is held under 50 and they don’t really mind if Virginia wins 50-49. Winning is winning, after all, and Virginia does a lot of it. It’s just not that appealing to outsiders.
As we’ve said before, it’s not beautiful, but if you look closely at Virginia’s defense, it’s pretty fanatical - and exhausting. Part of the reason why they consistently win close games (well in the regular season anyway) is because they are better conditioned for, and adapted to, the difficult environment they force other teams to play in at winning time.
It hasn’t worked as well against Duke as it has the rest of the ACC. We think Bennett is now 6-13 vs. Duke, and #6 was last year up there. And don’t think Duke has forgotten what happened.
In case you have, the game was tied 58-58 with 1.2 left and Kyle Filipowski was fouled as he drove to the basket.
Only the referees blew the call.
We know they blew the call, because the ACC admitted it. Even if Filipowski had hit one foul shot, Duke would likely have won. And it’s conceivable that the Blue Devils could have tipped in the game winner had he missed, too.
We’ll never know what might have happened, but we’ll bet you Filipowski remembers what did happen. We can’t say for sure, but we’d bet he thought about that during the summer and fall quite a bit.
Well, now that game is here, and Duke is in pretty good shape, all things considered.
The Blue Devils will go without Caleb Foster, who injured a foot during the loss at Wake Forest, but presumably everyone else, including Filipowski, is ready to go.
So what about dem Hoo’s?
Virginia’s biggest problem is just youth: 10 players are underclassmen, including freshmen Leon Bond and Blake Buchanan and sophomores Ryan Dunn, Isaac McKneely and Andrew Rohde. The primary seniors are Jordan Minor, Jacob Groves and Reece Beekman.
And Rohde, Minor and Groves are all in their first year with the Cavaliers, having transferred in.
Like Mike Brey’s system at Notre Dame, Bennett’s requires players to mature and wait their turns. That’s been complicated by a number of things, including NIL and the new transfer rule.
Still, Virginia is in third place, and that’s pretty good.
Bennett’s best player is Reece Beekman, who hit a late shot to take Duke out in Cameron in his freshman year. He’s very good and he’s a superb defender. His backcourt mate is Isaac McKneely and here’s a bit of a surprise: he gets (slightly) more time than does Beekman.
He’s not Virginia’s best three point shooter - he’s actually fifth-best percentage-wise -but he’s the most reliable. At 6-4 he’s also a bigger guard so the Blue Devils will have to keep an eye on him.
The guys ahead of him as three point shooters: Bond, Bryce Walker, Groves and Taine Murray but Groves is the one Duke will worry about the most.
He moved into the starting lineup against BC after coming off the bench against UNC, where he didn't score at all. Against the Eagles, he scored 13.
Ryan Dunn could be a problem. He has some challenges on offense, to be sure. He’s shooting 20 percent on threes and 55.3 percent overall, and just 53.4 percent from the line. That’s a bit similar to former Devil Billy King, who just couldn't shoot. Dunn has a potential NBA future, but it would be brighter if he develops some offensive skills.
Jordan Minor, who transferred from Merrimack, hardly a power. Well he’s been just fine moving up and stabilized Virginia in the post. At 6-8 and 242, he’s built somewhat like Miami’s Norchad Omier. He’s strong enough to push people around but obviously he’s also at a size disadvantage with Kyle Filipowski.
Grove, who came to Virginia from Oklahoma, where we think he may have once been a teammate with former Blue Devil Jordan Goldwire, but we’re honestly not sure. He could heat up and is a good three point shooter, so expect Duke to pay attention here.
And offense, as we said, is Virginia’s Achilles Heel.
Defense has been up and down for Virginia as Bennett taught his young players the principles of the Pack Line.
One of the things Bennett really tries to do is to slow the pace down to a crawl, which tends to make other teams uncomfortable and, at some point, makes the offense rush, leading to turnovers and bad shots.
Beating Virginia requires discipline and consistency and, usually, good shooting. This Duke team shoots and defends well and defends well.
As UNC showed, if Virginia is not shooting well, the defense doesn’t matter as much: UNC won scoring just 56 points. The Cavs of course managed just 44.
We expect UVA will have some luck holding Duke’s scoring down, but you have Filipowski, Mark Mitchell, Jeremy Roach, Tyrese Proctor and Jared McCain as legitimate three point shooting threats. Virginia presents unique challenges, but Duke has a lot of weapons to challenge them with.
Needless to say, defense will be a major factor. Duke’s has been really good, but if Virginia reverts to being the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, life should be a bit easier.
In the end, this will probably be a fairly typical Duke-Virginia matchup: Virginia slows it down and the Blue Devils have to find ways to get past that. A solid three point night would be a big help but even if that doesn’t happen, Duke will need to be mentally tough to beat the Cavaliers. This is a tough year for UVA and even so, they’re still 21-8, which is not exactly nightmare material. It’s not going to be easy, but Virginia rarely is.
One other point: as we said, this is a young team, and the atmosphere might get to them in a way it might not with an older team.
We’ll add links as we find them.