Virginia’s Best Defensive Efforts Under Tony Bennett

It wasn't fun but it was impressive.

ACC fans weren’t exactly counting on it or savoring the prospect of seeing it for another year. But with Tony Bennett’s absence from the bench, it’s likely that, for better or worse, Virginia will be hard-pressed to impose its lockdown defense as it once did.

Over the years we came to appreciate, if not admire, the effect the Cavalier defense could have on an opposing team. The results of Virginia’s defensive tactics were at times stunning, a sobering echo of earlier, pre-shotclock days.

Bennett arrived at Charlottesville for the 2010 season. By 2012 his UVa squads carved out a distinctive niche, establishing themselves as the ACC’s best in scoring defense. They led the ACC in suppressing scoring from 2012 through last season. From 2017 through 2020 the Cavs strangled opponents’ scoring with greater facility than anyone else in Division I.

The effects emerged from time to time in how strikingly few points Virginia’s opponents scored.

There were 21 games during Tony Bennett’s 15 years at Charlottesville in which Virginia’s Cavaliers held opponents under 40 points in a game. That’s fewer than one point per minute.

These results were marveled at, throwback outcomes from a time before shotclocks made it difficult to stifle an opponent by freezing the ball.

Eight of the low-ball games posted by UVa came in ACC play, most recently when the Cavs held Miami to 38 points last year. But Bennett’s way, perhaps an increasing turnoff in today’s more relaxed, transfer-accepting society, didn’t quite sustain the punch it had in previous seasons. Only four below-40 outcomes were imposed in the five years since UVa won the 2019 national championship.

Compare that number to the python-like grip Virginia flexed from 2012 through 2015, when it held nine opponents below 40 points. Among the victims was a solid Harvard team coached by Tommy Amaker, a member of Duke royalty – former player and floor leader, former Mike Krzyzewski assistant coach.

The 76-27 result that January day was an attention-grabber around the ACC.

Not that the Crimson falling to the Cavaliers reflected the usual ACC-Ivy disparity in strength. A month later Virginia held league-rival Georgia Tech to 28 points, and later still Wake Forest to 34 on its home court.