Looking beyond ACC for Virginia
Could Bennett’s Cavaliers vie for NCAA title?
No disrespect to Villanova — which survived a test on the road Sunday at Marquette — but Virginia looks like the best college men’s basketball team in the country.
While the top-ranked Wildcats have defeated the Big East’s top-tier teams in convincing fashion, there’s little opportunity for major statement wins in the same way the No. 2-ranked Cavaliers delivered Saturday by beating No. 4 Duke on the road with a stifling defensive effort.
Coach Tony Bennett’s team is 20-1, owns the nation’s No. 1 RPI and is 9-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference — a commanding two games ahead of secondplace Louisville and three ahead of Duke, Clemson and Miami (Fla.). It’s four games ahead of North Carolina, which lost Saturday to North Carolina State — the first time Duke and UNC lost home games on the same day since 1973.
So it might be a foregone conclusion that Virginia is going to win the ACC reg- ular-season championship in 2017-18. But Bennett’s teams — outside of last year’s squad — have been this good before, claiming the ACC regular-season title in 2014 and 2015 and going to the NCAA Elite Eight in 2016. Cutting down the nets in April, however, is much different than cutting them down in March after a conference championship. Kansas, which has won 13 consecutive Big 12 titles, has been far less successful in reaching the Final Four and can attest to that.
Even if Virginia is the top team in the country now — and continues winning at a rate to claim a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament — the Cavaliers’ ceiling in March is not an easy gauge.
Some might say Bennett’s pack-line, smothering defense and slow, hot potato offense are boring. But it’s also a proven winning product in the regular season. The real question is whether this team full of talented-but-not-super-talented players can get to San Antonio and win the whole thing. The single-elimination NCAA tournament has been cruel to heavily favored teams with outstanding offenses in the past, but a team this good defensively (leading the nation in scoring defense and ranking second in field goal percentage defense) is harder to forecast. That’s mostly because of how Bennett’s teams control the tempo — taking an offensively gifted Duke squad out of rhythm for the entire first half Saturday.
Getting a batch of underrecruited and chip-on-their-shoulder players to play defense is one feat. But it’s Bennett’s tempo-controlling offense — against teams in one of the country’s toughest conferences, no less — that is most impressive. Virginia ranks 288th in scoring. And still wins.
The individual ingredients are all there, fueled by a title-winning team chemistry. Kyle Guy (15.2 points per game) and Ty Jerome (9.5) provide the three-point marksmanship, and Devon Hall (12.7) and Isaiah Wilkins add more athleticism and the defensive tenacity this program is known for. Factor in freshman De’Andre Hunter and Rutgers transfer Nigel Johnson as key contributors. Most important, Bennett has size (frontcourt players Jack Salt is 6-10 and Mamadi Diakite is 6-9) and a deep roster (seven players average more than six points per game).
“We can be as good as we want to be,” Guy said.
Can Virginia win it all? Perhaps in a season when there’s no clear favorite, the Cavaliers’ throttling defense could spell a championship. They proved Saturday in one of the sport’s toughest road environments it can defeat a team with more offense and better athletes.
But after NCAA tournament disappointment the past three seasons, the challenge will be overcoming their flaws six times in a row when a loss ends their season.