CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — On a day when the University of Virginia honored longtime and national championship winning coach Tony Bennett, Georgia Tech, perhaps metaphorically anyway, was up against it before the ball was even tipped.
Virginia played efficient and confident offensively throughout to beat the visiting Yellow Jackets 75-61 in front of a crowd of 14,593 at John Paul Jones Arena. The result was Tech’s 13th straight loss to the Cavaliers and 11th straight in UVA’s home building.
“The difference between today’s games and the past three to four games, is that we were the team that put stress on the game to the other team,” Tech coach Damon Stoudamire said. “And we weren’t able to do that today. We had heavy legs, we did. I’ll never make up an excuse for myself, but I’ll say it for the guys. You could just tell, you could see it.”
Stoudamire knew coming in that his team, which was coming off a three-overtime win that ended just before midnight Tuesday at Clemson, had to limit the Cavaliers’ 3-point shooting and offensive rebounding. It did neither of those things in a loss that broke a short two-game winning streak. Virginia went 11 of 27 from beyond the arc and collected 13 offensive rebounds. It also tallied 21 assists on 30 makes.
Tech (11-13, 5-8 ACC) got 20 points from Nait George, 18 points from Duncan Powell and 15 points from Baye Ndongo. But guard Lance Terry, playing through a nagging and painful wrist injury, was held scoreless. Point guard Javian McCollum was also out due to injury and did not make the trip.
“Yeah, it was a lot of stress,” Powell said of a lineup that was sans McCollum and included a Terry who amounted to little more than a decoy. “Me and (George) are the only two 3-pointer shooters at that point. It’s hard to play games in today’s basketball with two guys that can shoot the 3. They’re just gonna chase us and sink in if we drive.”
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Virginia began the game by making its first three shots, all 3-pointers, to race out to a 9-0 lead. Tech settled in and got within 9-8, 13-12 and 15-14 before George hit a step-back 3 at the 11:51 mark to give the Jackets their first lead of the day at 17-15.
Tech also had a 24-21 lead with nine minutes left in the first half, but it couldn’t contain Isaac McKneely or consistently guard the 3-point line. McKneely had 18 points on 7 of 10 shooting over the first 20 minutes and the Cavaliers made six triples, the last of which came out of the hands of Andrew Rohde to put UVA up 41-33.
A George 3 just before the buzzer allowed Tech to go into the break down 41-36 instead of eight. The Jackets only had two turnovers, shot 44.8% from the floor and 7 of 11 from long range, yet UVA was a touch more efficient on offense with 13 assists on 17 made shots to the tune of a 54.8% shooting clip.
The Cavaliers began the second half making two more 3s and four of their first eight shots to build a 51-38 lead less than five minutes into the period. The Jackets just couldn’t keep up or get enough stops to stick around.
“When they got in us a little bit and we couldn’t score, I thought we didn’t do a good job of managing the game,” Stoudamire said. “We only had eight turnovers, but you gotta keep making those easy baskets to put stress on the game. We just couldn’t that.”
A Dai Dai Ames 3 — Virginia’s 10th of the day — put the home team up 63-49 and eliminated any thoughts of a Tech comeback.
Things were going so well at John Paul Jones Arena that a fan even sank a half-court shot during a timeout late in the second half.
McKneely led UVA (12-12, 5-8 ACC) with 20 points, Ames added 18 and Rohde finished with 11 to go along with nine assists. Tech fell to 1-25 under Stoudamire when shooting at a lower percentage than its opponent.
“We wanted to play our style of basketball. I know that Georgia Tech is really, really talented,” UVA coach Ron Sanchez said. “(Stoudamire) does a fantastic job with his group. He manipulates matchups, he gets what he wants, he’s got that NBA background in offensive package and you can see it at times. We knew we were gonna see some things that we were not prepared for in practice.
“For us, it was more how do we play our brand of basketball without changing what we do? How do we go a mile deeper instead of wider? Just do the things that we do better.”
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