GREENSBORO, N.C. -- No. 3 Virginia did what it does in its opening-round ACC Tournament game against No. 9-seed Florida State, pulling away to win 58-44 in a game that was short on offense at times, but long on all things Virginia: defense, deliberate play, and, perhaps most importantly, Justin Anderson, who returned after missing the bette part of nine games.
1. Justin Anderson made his return for Virginia, and not a moment too soon
As the postseason is beginning, Virginia (29-2) is going to need to be at full strength. Getting Justin Anderson back from a fractured pinky finger was going to be key. He was slated to come back for either the second-to-last or last regular-season game.
Then he found out he had to have an appendectomy, which happened last Friday. He practiced with the team this week, though, and after much hand-wringing by Virginia fans, he was going to play in the team's opening ACC Tournament game no matter what.
He saw 12 minutes of action less than a week after his (non-invasive) appendectomy, somehow. When asked which injury -- finger or appendectomy -- affected him more, he looked up quizzically at the question-asker.
"What do you mean, affects me?" Anderson said.
The questioner qualified that he meant when Anderson was on the court, which one affected him. Anderson just shrugged. "Everything feels the same. It's almost like nothing happened. I got it fixed. I'm not going to make any excuses for anything. My stomach felt great. It felt like it normally does. My finger felt great, just taped up."
He was ready to come back from the finger before finding out about the appendectomy. But instead of feeling sorry for himself, Anderson immediately tweeted out encouraging messages to Virginia fans who were ready to send him their own internal organs if need be. As it turns out, he was right.
"You've got to have strong faith and big faith. My creator, my teammates, my family, my coaches -- it's a game that I've been playing for so long. Like I said before, I told the coaches, I'm thankful to even just be out there for a minute," Anderson said. "I trust the process. I trust that everything happened for a reason. You've just got to follow the plan. There's nothing that you can do after a lot of this type of stuff happens. If any of it was in your control, then that would be a different story, but none of it was in my control."
He didn't play well, which was to be expected. He saw just 12 minutes of action and was 0 of 2 shooting with a foul and a turnover. He was clearly itching to get back out there with his teammates, and it's been hard to keep him on the bench.
He was simultaneously a bit too excited and a bit too tentative at times during his on-court action, passing up a few open shots that his teammates said he would normally shoot, and then seeming to bounce endlessly in his first few minutes out there, aching to make something happen on the court.
Virginia is one of the more team-first programs you'll see, and Anderson fits right into that model. While all the analysts gushed about him and his importance to his team's title chances, Anderson could only sit at home and shake his head.
"That's the one thing that kind of frustrated me is that it kind of all became about me and that's not who I am. That's not who our team is," Anderson said. "I'm just so thankful that those guys stepped up, manned up and showed the country that they're a really good basketball team."
His teammates were 7-1 in the eight full games without him.
"There's rebuilding of chemistry. That always happens after someone's out for a few games," teammate Malcolm Brogdon said. "But that will come back extremely quick. He was really patient today, so there were no problems."
There was one scary moment early when Anderson fell underneath the basket after taking a hard fall, and he didn't bounce up right away.
"When he got upended and fell, I was concerned for a second, but he said he landed on his backside so he was okay," Virginia head coach Tony Bennett said. "But (he's been out) a month, and so hopefully we can get more and he can continue to get sharper. That's why it was a good win for us."
Anderson, though, wasn't scared. He almost felt relief shoot through him in that moment, the jolt of getting back to game action flowing back into his veins.
"That wasn't scary. You've just got to be tough and you've got to hop back up. I tried to get back up a little too quick. It was a good feeling," Anderson said. "(FSU) cracked me on that one. They got all ball. It wasn't a foul. But yeah, it kind of was, 'Welcome back to the ACC.'
"My teammates were giving it to me a little soft in practice. They weren't blocking my shot. But ACC basketball is high level."
2. Virginia had to overcome a bit of a choppy second half
Virginia made almost every shot it took in the first half (12 of 19) and led 34-17 at the break. But a stop-and-start second half punctuated by a lot of fouls and lacking anything resembling rhythm or flow seemed to mess with Virginia's offensive rhythm.
"First half, we really came out strong and we wanted to impose our defense and that's what we did. In the second half, we really got away from that," Virginia's Anthony Gill said.
The flow of the game itself seemed to frustrate the Cavaliers in the way that they usually frustrate opponents, and their decision-making started to suffer.
"I thought we lost a little bit of our energy. In the first half, we were striving on our intensity and our energy," Brogdon said. "In the second half, we were lacking a little bit."
Ultimately, though, even when Florida State (17-16) got it to within a possession in the second half, Virginia always made shots when it counted. Brogdon had gone scoreless for most of the game until the end, and he made a few big-time shots to give the team a bit more of a cushion.
That's just kind of what Virginia does.
"We're tough. We're a hard-nosed team that tries to take care of the ball and tries to get good shots and make them run the clock when they're on offense," Brogdon said. "That's what we tried to do and I thought we outlasted them today."
3. Virginia is just a different team when its bigs are playing as well as they did
Virginia's guards, with a very limited Anderson and a struggling Brogdon, were not carrying the team the way they usually do. And so in the flow of the Virginia offense, of course, the big men stepped up and filled the void.
Darion Atkins (who took home ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors), Anthony Gill, Mike Tobey and Isaiah Wilkins -- the bigs who played under the basket -- combined for 29 points and 19 rebounds. Tobey in particular was aggressive around the basket, and both he and Gill rebounded incredibly well against Florida State. The Seminoles have a lot of size and can make life difficult for opponents, but not for those two.
Virginia has won some big-time games as a result of Tobey catching fire. He had 11 points on 5 of 6 shooting and a few dunks, too. But he's been inconsistent.
"He can ignite us so well," Brogdon said. "When he's physical and he's right, Tobey's the best big man in the league."
12: Florida State scored nearly a third of its points (12) on Virginia's 14 turnovers, an uncharacteristically high number.
13: Fabulous Florida State freshman Xavier Rathan-Mayes finished with 13 points against the combined defense of Malcolm Brogdon and Marial Shayok (and the Pack Line).
"I thought he was pressing a little bit. He got in foul trouble, sat out. And he took a couple good shots, they just didn't go in in the second half. But a couple times I thought he pressed a little bit and forced the issue. I thought, that's a fine line because you want -- Malcolm is wired to be aggressive, and I want him to be aggressive, we talk about that, but still have some soundness. But then he did hit the big one where he kind of lowered his shoulder and got the two pull ups or step backs and knocked his free throws down. So, again, we'll need more from him. He knows that. But he did make some key buckets." -- Bennett on Malcolm Brogdon
"We always crash the glass hard. I guess the guards really missed well today so it gave us an opportunity to rebound." - Gill, crediting his teammates' poor shooting for his own four offensive rebounds
