Tall Challenge Awaits 'Hoos in Sweet 16
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By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – At first glance, it might appear to be a mismatch. On one side is Virginia, the No. 1 seed in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament’s South Region. On the other is 12th-seeded Oregon.
UVA is 31-3, with losses to teams, Duke and Florida State, that also have reached the Sweet Sixteen. Oregon is 25-12 and would have missed the NCAAs had it not won the Pac-12 tournament.
Do not be deceived. The Ducks’ record belies the momentum they’ll carry into their third-round game. Oregon, seeking its 11th straight victory, meets UVA at approximately 10 p.m. Thursday at the KFC Yum! Center, with the winner advancing to face second-seeded Tennessee or third-seeded Purdue in the Elite Eight on Saturday night.
“At this point in the tournament, everyone is playing at such a high level, you would be crazy to underestimate [any opponent],” Virginia junior guard Ty Jerome said.
Assistant coach Brad Soderberg, who’s in his fourth season on Tony Bennett’s staff at UVA, drew the assignment of preparing the scouting report on the Ducks, who start four 6-9 players alongside 6-2 point guard Payton Pritchard.
“Their size is impressive,” Bennett said.
The Ducks, Soderberg said Wednesday, are “as long a team as we’ve faced since I’ve been here. I’ve never seen a team start four guys 6-9. And not just that, but they’re long 6-9 [players]. What compounds the problem is that they’re playing that matchup zone, or switching man-to-man [defense], which just makes passing lanes really difficult.”
In December, Oregon lost 7-2 freshman Bol Bol, a projected NBA lottery pick, to a season-ending injury. Other Ducks have experienced medical setbacks, too, though not as serious, but head coach Dana Altman’s team has jelled over the past six weeks.
Since dropping three straight in February – road games against Oregon State, USC and UCLA – Oregon is unbeaten. The Ducks’ winning streak started with a 28-point rout of Arizona State. Their average margin of victory in NCAA tournament wins over Wisconsin and UC Irvine: 18.5 points.
In evaluating Oregon, Soderberg has focused on its winning streak. In the Ducks’ past 10 games, they’ve outscored opponents by an average of nearly 18 points. Opponents have shot only 34.9 percent from the floor and 23 percent from 3-point range during that stretch.
“I think they’ve shortened their bench a little bit,” Soderberg said. “They’re playing seven guys more minutes [apiece] instead of playing nine guys less minutes. That might have something to do with it, but I think the biggest thing has been defensively.
“In points per possession [defensively], we were the best in the ACC. Their numbers were better than ours in the last 10 games. That’s saying a lot.”
One of Virginia’s rivals in the ACC, Georgia Tech, also plays a matchup zone that features man-to-man elements, “but nothing like this,” Soderberg said. “You watch sometimes and you say, ‘That’s a matchup zone’ Then you watch a little bit more and you go, ‘No, it’s man-to-man, but they’re switching everything.’ To their credit, they disguise it very well.”
Against the Ducks, Soderberg said, “I think everyone is going to have to handle the ball well. In fact, during this 10-game stretch, they’ve been forcing 16 turnovers a game, so no matter who has the ball in their hands, and everybody will touch it, you have to be sound with the basketball.”
UVA’s guards, the 6-5 Jerome said, have to “be sure with the ball. They want to try to confuse you, they want to try to turn you over, try to speed you up a little bit. You gotta find that balance of keeping everyone calm and getting everybody shots, but not playing too slow. It’s just a balance you find as the game goes on.”
Altman said his players’ “communication has been a lot better lately. Guys have taken a lot more pride in doing a good job with the scouting report and with their defense. So hopefully, we can keep that up [against the Cavaliers].
“This is the most efficient offense, though, we’ve faced. Their efficiency numbers are off the chart. They don’t turn the ball over. They get the shot they want on most possessions. So it will be a big challenge for us defensively.”
A win would send the Wahoos to the Elite Eight for the first time since 2016. They cleared a significant hurdle last weekend in Columbia, S.C., where, after being bombarded with questions about their historic loss to 16th-seeded UMBC in the 2018 tourney, they fell behind 16th-seeded Gardner-Webb in the first round Friday.
But Virginia rallied to defeated Gardner-Webb 71-56 and then ousted ninth-seeded Oklahoma 63-51 in the second round Sunday.
The mood among the Cavaliers has been lighter in Louisville.
“I think in some ways there’s a little bit less pressure,” said Jay Huff, a 7-1 redshirt sophomore. “It’s not like this is as far as we want to make it, but there certainly is that release of pressure.”
Bennett said: “I think certainly there’s an enjoyment and a freedom in it, but there’s also a desire to play well and advance again. Burdened, unburdened, it doesn’t really matter in my opinion. You just step up to the challenge that’s there. You have joy in it, you have focus in it, and you got to be able to look both victory and defeat in the eye and say it’s a possibility and go forward. I think that’s the best way to be, and our guys have worked very hard to get to this spot.”
This will be UVA’s second game in five weeks at ACC rival Louisville’s 22,090-seat arena. The ‘Hoos have won four straight at the KFC Yum! Center, with their most recent victory there coming on Feb. 23.
In that game, Virginia erased a 10-point halftime deficit and won 64-52. Redshirt sophomore De’Andre Hunter, who in 2017 hit a last-second 3-pointer to stun the Cardinals at the KFC Yum! Center, made 9 of 11 shots and scored a career-best 26 points there last month.
“We’re comfortable here, but it’s going to be a different game, different kind of atmosphere,” Hunter said Wednesday.
The 6-7 Hunter leads the Cavaliers in scoring (15.2 ppg) this season. Second is junior guard Kyle Guy (15.1 ppg), who on Tuesday was named to the NABC Coaches’ All-America third team. (Hunter was a second-team selection.)
Guy was 1 for 15 from 3-point range in Columbia last weekend – 0 for 10 against Oklahoma – but “what I like is he played well [otherwise],” Bennett said. “He got to the lane, he passed well, he guarded hard. It’s about the whole game.”
The 6-2 Guy grabbed six rebounds against Gardner-Webb and five against Oklahoma. He also had three assists against the Sooners.
“I think when my shots aren’t falling,” Guy said, “I try to help the team in other ways, whether it’s play a little bit harder on defense or try to create for others. Or even just my presence on the floor sometimes gets guys open because [opponents are] not going to help off of me, even if I am shooting 0 for 10. So that helps the team.”
Guy, whose hometown of Indianapolis is about a two-hour drive from Louisville, has played three times at the KFC Yum! Center as a Cavalier. He has yet to connect from beyond the arc in a game there, but his teammates’ confidence in Guy hasn’t wavered. For the season, he’s shooting 43.9 percent from long range.
“We know how good of a shooter he is,” junior forward Braxton Key said. “He just needs to see one go in, and he’s fine.”
Bennett, who’s in his 10th season at UVA, is considerably more familiar with the Oregon program – and Pac-12 hoops – than his players are. As head coach at Washington State, Bennett posted a 6-2 record against Oregon.
At UVA, he’s 2-0 against the Ducks. Virginia defeated Oregon 63-48 at John Paul Jones Arena in December 2010 and then won 67-54 in Eugene the next season.
For the players who’ll take the court Thursday night in Louisville, of course, that’s ancient history. Most of them were in middle school the last time these programs met.
“It’s a new challenge,” Jerome said. “We’ve never seen them before. They’ve never seen us before. We’re both facing that challenge, and it’s about coming out and trying to do what you do.”