Court Vision: Short-handed Virginia routs Wake Forest to win seventh straight
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- No. 2 Virginia (26-1, 14-1 ACC) was supposed to have a hard time with Wake Forest, a team that gave it a nightmare of a game just 11 days ago in Charlottesville, without not only Justin Anderson but also starting point guard London Perrantes (broken nose). Well, Virginia did not have a very tough time with the Deacs, dispatching them 70-34 in its most dominating victory since beating Harvard 76-27 back on Dec. 21. All this was without two starters against a Wake team that was playing with a ton of confidence.
1. Virginia's offense got right at a good time
No one would argue that Virginia has looked like anything close to what it was with Justin Anderson in the lineup. The defense has remained a constant, but Virginia's offense has just not been there. It's not that the Cavaliers have been sloppy offensively, but the loss of Anderson meant the loss of one of their better shooters and shot-makers.
Virginia had not shot over 45.3 percent without him in the lineup for all or part of its last five games, and as a result, it has slogged its way to five straight wins in that stretch.
Why should it have been any better without Anderson AND starting point guard, London Perrantes? (Perrantes collided with teammate and fellow starter Malcolm Brogdon during Sunday's win over Florida State and suffered a broken nose and a mild concussion.)
During the days off between Sunday and this game, Virginia head coach Tony Bennett had some of his players mired in shooting slumps work with the Noah's shooting machine, which tracks the arc on each shot (Noah's Ark/Noah's Arc).
It paid dividends, as Virginia hit 4-of-7 three's in the first half and 5-of-14 for the game. They hit more jumpers, moved the ball more smoothly offensively and had a balanced attack where no player had more than 11 and none had fewer than two out of the 11 that saw time.
"I wasn't surprised. I know how good we can be when we come and we play together and we execute and we make shots," said Brogdon, who finished with nine points. "Our defense is going to be there. All we have to do is make shots and I thought we did that."
A big key was Evan Nolte's emergence. He's been starting in Anderson's place, and he just has not been a factor offensively at all. He had missed his last eight three-point attempts, but in this game he found his stroke again, going 2-of-4 from three and 3-of-6 overall for eight points.
"When I caught the ball, just shoot it, not trying to think about too much if I missed the shot or not," Nolte said. "Just going and playing the game. I think it helped for sure."
Virginia had 15 assists on 28 field goals and just played good, effective, balanced offense. That's the Virginia team that got to No. 2 in the country, with or without Anderson, and that's how it will have to keep winning. Virginia shot over 50 percent (exactly 50 percent) since its win at North Carolina on Feb. 2, which was its last full game with Anderson.
It was even bigger, then, to get back on track offensively without TWO starters this time.
"I think it speaks to our maturity and our togetherness. I think we play as a team, we play unified every night," Brogdon said. "I think it also speaks to how well we're coached. I think we have an outstanding coach and an outstanding system that we play in."
2. The Cavaliers bench didn't let them down and that could pay dividends
Nolte will go back to the bench once Anderson returns, but he'll come off of it a better player, a more confident one and one who -- like always -- is able to fill in defensively without much of a drop-off, if any.
The freshmen have been up and down for Virginia all year, but they all had great games for the Cavaliers in this one. Isaiah Wilkins was just 1-of-4 shooting, but had nine rebounds in 23 minutes to go with three blocks. And it came down to Devon Hall and Marial Shayok to fill the void left by Perrantes, and both combined for 16 points, five assists, one turnover, four steals and seven rebounds in 50 minutes.
Virginia had to have everyone on its roster step up. And everyone did exactly that.
"We talked about it -- we said this is a program game, meaning doing it the way we've got to do it, all hands on deck," Bennett said. "But those guys really stepped up and played.
"It was Isaiah Wilkins, Devon Hall, certainly Marial (Shayok), Evan Nolte, those guys, and of course the (regulars). But that was real important and I was real glad to see that. We needed that and that's where depth comes in. ... It's so gratifying and rewarding for a coach and even the players who play a lot to see those guys who don't get as many minutes do the job in an important game for us, a very important game."
It was a big one. Duke is right on Virginia's heels (and has the tiebreaker) for the regular-season crown, and to play in this type of environment where teams like Louisville and Duke have struggled -- and N.C. State lost -- it wasn't going to be easy.
But with the supporting cast playing as well as they did, they made it look easy.
Brogdon told Shayok to play with confidence. Shayok had been in a bit of a slump and he got the start in place of Perrantes -- which Bennett said was basically an arbitrary decision between he and Hall, and since Hall had started last time Perrantes missed a game, he figured it was Shayok's turn.
"We have a 'next man up' mentality. We just assured them we're going to be ready and play with confidence," Shayok said of his attitude entering this game.
Virginia had looked tight, for lack of a better way of putting it, entering this game. Shots weren't falling, and that seemed to compound their problems on both sides of the ball where it seemed like they feared making a mistake.
As they got into a groove in this game, all those cares faded away in a hurry. And Bennett wanted to see his guys finally relax.
"I told them before the game, I said, 'Don't be anxious. Just play. You can't be perfect. Just play. Be thankful for this opportunity.' We're looking for, we said, not perfection but as close to excellence as we can get," Bennett said. "I thought they played pretty free tonight, and it certainly helped when we got a lead but that's important in that situation."
So not only did it establish that Virginia's bench can play if called upon, but it also gave some of the younger guys incredibly valuable experience that will only help the Cavaliers in March when they get everyone back.
"Very valuable, especially coming down the stretch, into the ACC and NCAA Tournament," Brogdon said. "We need depth, and I think the teams with depth are the ones that make the long runs in the Tournament."
3. Wake took a bit of a step back in the evolution of the program Danny Manning is building
When Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning got up to the podium, he didn't mince words. "This should be short and sweet. This was a beatdown. Any questions?"
"Beatdown" was uttered four times during his six-minute press conference, and it's hard to argue with that description of what transpired. The Deacs were down by as many as 38 points and were fortunate to crack 30.
This had been a Wake Forest team that was on an upward trajectory all year, getting better with every game, seemingly. They beat Virginia Tech, N.C. State and Miami at home to win three out of four after having played teams like Syracuse, Clemson and Florida State tough on the road and Louisville and Duke at home.
They went to Virginia and lost by just one point -- the only one-score victory for Virginia this season, anywhere -- back on Feb. 14. They played Notre Dame close for awhile on the road before the Irish offense was too much.
They hadn't embarrassed themselves, and they'd always competed. Until this.
"They came out and played well, and we didn't play well, and that's disappointing," Manning said. "You get the No. 2 team in the country coming in here and we didn't bring it tonight. That's on me. I didn't have them ready to go. But we've got to get better. We'll watch tape.
"The tell-all -- at the end of the game, they've got the game in control and they're still flying around defensively. They're still getting deflections. They're still blocking shots. They're still running on the break. That's what the No. 2 team in the country does."
At times, Manning sounded downright envious of the culture that Bennett had created at Virginia, one that took a ton of hard work but also time. It's going to take Manning time, too. "For us, you look at it and you say regardless of what the score was, they competed and they grinded and they battled every possession, and the score didn't matter," Manning said. "That's a sign of a very good team, and we have to get to that point and we're not there."
But he has to feel discouraged that his team played Virginia so close in Charlottesville and couldn't be similarly competitive at home against an even more shorthanded Virginia team.
They can't let games like this beat them twice, though. They have a winnable game against Pitt at home on Sunday on national television.
"It's a big loss in the sense of the score and how it was done. But there's no rest for the weary. There's no feeling sorry for you. That's our conference, and if you don't come out and play, it could happen again," Manning said.
"I think the competitor in you should watch tape, should look at the stat sheet and be a little motivated to come out and try to produce a different outcome."
5 of 24 -- Wake Forest's starting three big men -- Devin Thomas, Cornelius Hudson and Dinos Mitoglou -- combined for 14 points on 5-of-24 shooting. In the first meeting, they had 33 points on 9-of-19 shooting.
34 -- Wake Forest's 34 points matches its fewest points in an ACC game in the shot-clock era and was the fewest points it has ever scored in LJVM Coliseum.
