'Hoos Follow Hunter's Lead in Gritty Win
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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
COLUMBIA, S.C. – Two years and nine months after joining the University of Virginia men’s basketball program, De’Andre Hunter finally made his NCAA tournament debut. The Philadelphia native’s performance reminded the hoops world how much his absence hurt the Cavaliers in last year’s NCAA tourney.
A 6-7, 225-pound swingman who redshirted in 2016-17, Hunter was the ACC’s Sixth Man of the Year in 2017-18, only to suffer a season-ending wrist injury in the ACC tournament.
Without him, UVA became the first No. 1 seed in NCAA tourney history to lose to a No. 16 seed, falling to UMBC in the first round last year in Charlotte, N.C.
With him, Virginia, the No. 1 seed in the South Region, overcame a slow start Friday afternoon and rallied for a 71-56 victory over 16th-seeded Gardner-Webb at Colonial Life Arena.
Virginia (30-3) advances to meet ninth-seeded Oklahoma (20-13) in the second round Sunday. The Sooners hammered No. 8 seed Mississippi 95-72 in the first game Friday afternoon, shooting 57.6 percent from the floor and committing only four turnovers.
“I didn’t get to watch it,” said UVA head coach Tony Bennett, “but my staff said they were impressive.”
The Cavaliers weren’t that efficient offensively against Gardner-Webb – they committed 15 turnovers and made only 7 of 23 shots from 3-point range – but they dominated around the basket. UVA outrebounded the Runnin’ Bulldogs 35-21 and made 21 of 31 shots inside the arc.
Hunter, a first-team All-ACC selection who’s also the conference’s defensive player of the year, led the way. He finished with 23 points, three rebounds, two blocked shots and one assist.
“He’s a monster for us to guard,” Gardner-Webb head coach Tim Craft said, “and [for] most of the country.”
“He’s ridiculous,” said 7-1 redshirt sophomore Jay Huff, who enrolled at UVA in June 2016 with Hunter and guards Kyle Guy and Ty Jerome.
“He was tremendous today,” Guy said.
Heading into his NCAA tourney debut, Hunter said afterward, “I was really excited, probably the most excited I’ve been in a while for a game.”
No. 12 rarely shows much emotion on the floor, but this was not just another game. He celebrated after a momentum-changing dunk that cut Gardner-Webb’s lead to 38-36 with 17:28 remaining. About 70 seconds later, Hunter gave the ‘Hoos their first lead, at 39-38, with a three-point play. They never trailed again.
“In the second half it was win or lose,” Hunter said. “If we lose, we’re not playing again, so we just knew we had to come out and fight, and that’s what we did.”
Redshirt junior Mamadi Diakite (17) and Jerome (13) also scored in double figures for UVA, and Guy added eight points. But don’t be fooled by the margin of victory. This win did not come easily for the Cavaliers.
With 6:30 left in the opening half, the Runnin’ Bulldogs led 30-16 – that matched UVA’s largest deficit of the season — and their fans’ cheers threatened to shake the building. Columbia is about 125 miles from Gardner-Webb’s campus in Boiling Springs, N.C., and in “some ways it felt like a road game [for UVA] with the crowd, too,” Bennett said.
It was an 11-point game with 2:25 to play in the first half, but freshman point guard Kihei Clark passed to Huff for a dunk that made it 36-27. Clark then sank a long 3-pointer to cut Gardner-Webb’s lead to 36-30. That was the score at halftime, and UVA regrouped in the locker room.
Getting it “back to a six-point game was pivotal for us,” Bennett said, “because Gardner-Webb’s good.”
The ‘Hoos kept coming after intermission. A 12-0 run gave them a 44-38 lead, and they followed that with an 11-0 run capped by junior forward Braxton Key’s 3-pointer with 10:13 remaining.
“Once we figured stuff out,” Huff said, “I think we were good to go, and we started playing the way we know we can play and the way we know we should play. We just had to figure it out a little bit and get the jitters out, and then we were fine.”
The Bulldogs (23-12) turned the ball over 12 times in the second half, and their shots stopped dropping too. After shooting 53.6 percent before the break, they were 7 of 22 (31.8 percent) from the floor in the final 20 minutes.
“I think we just locked in and wore them down defensively,” Clark said. “We just imposed our will in the end.”
Matching up with Virginia “was difficult for everybody in the ACC this year, for the most part,” Craft said, “so it was going to be a difficult challenge for us. They beat us up on the glass. I thought they made some good adjustments, both offensively and defensively, to exploit some areas that in the beginning of the first half they weren’t.”
Bennett said: “I thought the guys just kept plugging, and Gardner-Webb missed some shots. Maybe they got fatigued. I thought the resolve of our team was good to weather that storm and have a good second half.”
The 5-9 Clark made only 1 of 5 shots, but his contribution was immense in his first NCAA tournament game. Seemingly in perpetual motion on the floor, he finished five rebounds, four steals and three steals. Clark also took a change.
“I thought his competitiveness and his ability to come up with loose balls was significant,” Bennett said. “He played, obviously, very poised and well for a first-year.”
Like UMBC had been 2018, Gardner-Webb was significantly smaller than Virginia.
“When you go against these quick teams, you have to sometimes match the quickness to the best of your abilities,” Bennett said. “Last year, we didn’t have Kihei or De’Andre [against UMBC], so [their presence Friday] allowed us to be a little more versatile to match their quickness and then to switch some of those ball screens.”
The 6-9 Diakite entered the NCAA tournament having scored in double figures only once in his previous 11 games, and he started slowly Friday. But he pressed on, as did the other Cavaliers, and finished with a career-best nine rebounds.
Diakite made 8 of 10 shots from the floor, and his 17 points were one shy of his career high.
“I did my part,” Diakite said. “Everyone did their part, and it happened that we won.”
Jerome, who had a game-high six assists and three steals, was asked about Diakite at the postgame press conference. He was most proud of the way Diakite persevered.
“He did something today and I don’t know if he could have done it at the beginning of the year,” Jerome said. “He came out and had a shaky start, and the way he responded was huge for us. We needed every bit of it, and that’s something he definitely couldn’t do last year, and that’s just a testament to his growth as a person, really, more than a player, just his ability to respond and fight through adversity.”
The rest of the Cavaliers showed similar grit when things went awry in their first-round game this year. If there was panic against UMBC, it was conspicuously absent Friday.
“I was really proud of the team at how we responded, because [the Bulldogs] punched us in the mouth,” Guy said. “They did hit some tough shots, but we also had some breakdowns, and there was less of that in the second half.”
The pressure on the Cavaliers became palpable as Gardner-Webb hit shot after shot in the first half.
“When you’re in that spot, you feel the crowd, but it’s something we had to go through,” Bennett said at his postgame press conference. “I’m glad I’m up here this year feeling a little different than when I had Ty and Kyle with me last year [in Charlotte].”
The loss to UMBC “will always be part of our story,” Bennett said. “I understand that. I’m sure a lot of people thought it was going to be part of our story the second year in a row. But this is a new year.”
THEY SAID IT: In front of a crowd that included Ralph Sampson and former UVA associate head coach Ron Sanchez, the ‘Hoos reached the 30-win mark for the fifth time in program history. Among the postgame comments:
* Hunter: “I was just trying to score on the offense. I didn’t play outside of it. I just tried to be aggressive when my team needed me and make shots.”
* Jerome said: “It’s about doing what we do, staying united, not looking around. Just staying in the moment.”
* Jerome on the difference in the second half: “For me it was coming out and being in attack mode, trying to touch the paint and get guys shots. If the shots didn’t fall, keep telling them, ‘Keep shooting them.’ As long as we get good shots, I could live with whatever happened.”
* Craft on Gardner-Webb’s first appearance in the NCAA’s Division I tournament: “Just really proud of our group, proud of these guys up here and all the guys in our locker room and what they’ve done for our school, for our university, for our alumni, our former players, our community. This run that they’ve been on, that we’ve been on, has just done so much for a lot of people in our area and that are associated with Gardner-Webb.”