Top-Seeded 'Hoos Ready for Next Challenge
Jeff White’s Twitter | Subscribe to UVA Insider Articles | Video Highlights | Season Statistics
By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE – The brainchild of Tony Bennett’s father, Dick, the Pack Line is a team defense, a system whose whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.
For the Pack Line to work well, as it has at Virginia during the younger Bennett’s tenure as head coach, it’s not essential that every player on the court be an outstanding individual defender. But the more standout defenders a team has, the better the Pack Line operates.
In De’Andre Hunter, the Cavaliers have their latest shutdown defender. A 6-7, 225-pound redshirt sophomore from Philadelphia, Hunter was named ACC Defensive Player of the Year this week, and he’s one of the reasons second-ranked UVA (28-2) is allowing only 54.6 points per game, the fewest of any Division I team.
“I feel like that’s big for me, because I really take pride on the defensive end,” Hunter said Tuesday afternoon at John Paul Jones Arena, “and I was really happy I won that award.”
The Cavaliers’ coaching staff has “preached defense since the first day I walked on Grounds,” said Hunter, who also was named to the All-ACC first team. “So having a player on this team that wins that award, I think that just shows the value of defense in this program.”
In the past five seasons, three other UVA players have been so honored: Isaiah Wilkins (2017-18), Malcolm Brogdon (2014-15 and 2015-16) and Darion Atkins (2014-15).
Hunter doesn’t rank among the Cavaliers’ leaders in steals or blocked shots, but with his athleticism and 7-foot-2 wingspan, he’s capable of guarding anyone from point guards to power forwards. It’s no wonder NBA teams are so high on him.
“The game’s about being a two-way player,” Bennett said. “I don’t care what anybody says. If you can’t stop people, you can’t play at a high level. You have to be able to stop people. Doesn’t take away anything from your offense. You develop that.”
Bennett recalled a conversation he had with Hunter at a Charlottesville restaurant early in Hunter’s career at UVA.
“I challenged him,” Bennett told reporters Tuesday. “I said, ‘You know, you have something that people would die for from a basketball standpoint with your length and all that.’ “
Bennett advised Hunter to study Brogdon’s defensive techniques and to follow that example, and Hunter has done so.
Hunter and Bennett talked again Monday at the same restaurant.
“I told him how thankful I was and proud of him I was that he’s embracing that,” Bennett said.
Virginia, which shared the ACC regular-season title with North Carolina, is the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, which started Tuesday afternoon in Charlotte, N.C. Defending champion UVA has a double bye and will play No. 8 seed NC State (21-10) or No. 9 seed Clemson (19-12) in the first ACC quarterfinal, Thursday at 12:30 p.m. at the Spectrum Center.
ALL IN THE FAMILY: Among those rooting for Liberty in the Atlantic Sun championship game Sunday were Bennett and others in the UVA program who remain close with Ritchie McKay and Brad Soucie.
McKay was Bennett’s associate head coach for six seasons at Virginia before returning to Liberty in the spring of 2015 for a second stint as head coach. Soucie, Liberty’s associate head coach, also worked for Bennett at UVA before joining McKay in Lynchburg.
“They were both such a huge part of building this program with me,” Bennett said.
Liberty edged Lipscomb on Sunday to earn the Atlantic Sun’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
“So happy [for McKay and Soucie],” Bennett said.
Kyle Getter, who’s in his first year as Virginia’s director of recruiting/player development, was an assistant under McKay at Liberty from 2015-18 before joining Bennett’s staff last year.
“We watched the game as a family at my house [Sunday],” Getter said, “and just to see the joy on the players’ faces, and Coach McKay and Coach Soucie, and knowing where the program was when we got there in 2015, was awesome.”
Getter said his first year at UVA “has been an amazing experience, just to be able to be around these coaches and these players on a day-to-day basis. It’s been an unbelievable learning experience. I’m taking notes every day, I’m learning, I’m continuing to grow, and it’s also a lot of fun being around these guys as people.”
SOMETHING NEW: Junior forward Braxton Key spent two seasons at Alabama before transferring to UVA last summer. He attended high school in Nashville, Tenn., until his senior year, when he transferred to Oak Hill Academy in Southwest Virginia.
Key, the Cavaliers’ leading rebounder, knows little about the ACC tournament.
“I haven’t really watched it much,” he said. “I’ve just been kind of focused on the SEC for most of my life. But I’m excited. You always hear great stories and you see great games, and guys become legends in the ACC tournament, so I’m looking forward to the experience.”
He’s played in two SEC tourneys, where Kentucky fans tend to dominate the proceedings. “It’s all Big Blue, but it’s fun,” Key said. “I’m kind of excited to see the difference between the two tournaments.”
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION: In All-ACC balloting, two Cavaliers made the first team – Hunter and junior shooting guard Kyle Guy – and another, junior point guard Ty Jerome, was named to the second team.
Guy said Tuesday that Jerome, who leads the ACC in assists, deserved better.
“He is what makes this team go,” Guy said. “Obviously, it’s a biased opinion, but I think a lot of people would agree with that. If someone should have been on first-team All-ACC, it should have been him, even if that meant me not [being] on there … He gets me probably 60 percent of my shots.”
TOUCHING MOMENT: The Senior Day ceremony before UVA’s regular-season finale Saturday at JPJ included a video in which five of Jack Salt’s former teammates – Isaiah Wilkins, Marial Shayok, London Perrantes, Devon Hall and Jarred Reuter – paid tribute to the 6-10 center from New Zealand.
“I had no idea that was coming,” said Salt, a fifth-year senior who turned 23 last month. “That was awesome. Those guys are my brothers. Obviously, I’m close with [the current UVA players], but those guys came up with me.”
Others who praised Salt’s contributions to the program in the video included former UVA associate head coach Ron Sanchez, who left last spring to take over the program at Charlotte.
“That was really cool of him to do that,” Salt said.
His career at UVA has been a roller-coaster ride, said Salt, who redshirted as a freshman in 2014-15. “When I came here, I didn’t think I was going to play,” he said.
In 2015-16, he averaged 6.6 minutes per game. “I have no idea why I was playing, but Coach put me out there, and then I got more of a role,” Salt said.
Over the past three seasons, he’s started 94 games.
“It’s been wild, but I’ve loved it here,” Salt said. “Even right now. I’m not playing too much, but I’m just ready to give my all for this team and finish off as strong as I can.”
LOCKED IN: In ACC play, Mamadi Diakite averaged 2.1 blocked shots per game. Among his counterparts in the league, only Clemson’s Elijah Thomas and Georgia Tech’s James Banks had more blocks.
UVA nominated Diakite, a 6-9 redshirt junior, for the ACC’s all-defensive team, but he wasn’t among the top five vote-getters. That didn’t bother him, Diakite said Tuesday.
“I don’t care if they recognize me or they don’t,” he said. “What matters to me is to push this team as far as it can get.”
The Cavaliers’ goals, now that the regular season is behind them, are to win the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
“In order to get there, I [can’t] worry about outside noise,” said Diakite, who’s averaging 7.1 points and 4.0 rebounds per game.
Diakite has improved markedly on defense since he arrived at UVA in the summer of 2015, and “it has gotten better from the beginning of the season to now,” he said. “Everything is slowing down for me, and I’m able to see everything clearly.”
Asked about Diakite’s play in general, Bennett said, “I think he’s improved and I think there’s still room for improvement, which is exciting for the evolution of his game and how to help this program … And he has at times been a terrific X factor. We’ve had a few X factors this year, but I think he’s going in the right direction, and there’s still more, which is good.”
FAB FOUR: The recruiting class that enrolled at UVA in June 2016 ranks among the best in program history. It consisted of Guy, Jerome, Hunter and 7-1 Jay Huff, who broke into the rotation as a redshirt sophomore this season.
“All four of us doing this, this is what everyone thought we were going to do when we first got here,” Jerome said. “So to see us finally all coming together now, especially with Jay being a big part of it, it’s awesome to watch unfold.”
Bennett said he treasures a photo taken of the foursome during Hunter’s official visit in September 2015.
“They looked so young and thin,” Bennett said. “It’s a great picture. That was the hope for those guys, to continue to build on that great foundation and success of the players before them, and now to see them mature as all of them are into their upperclassmen years … that’s the hope, that’s kind of the formula.”