No. 22 Virginia Wins 61-49 at Boston College

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. – Jay Huff (Durham, N.C.) led the team with 18 points and five blocks and Sam Hauser (Stevens Point, Wis.) had his third-straight double-double in Virginia’s (7-2, 3-0 ACC) 61-49 win at Boston College (2-9, 0-5 ACC) on Saturday afternoon.

Huff matched his career-high with 18 points, added eight rebounds and had five blocks in the game. Hauser had 17 points and 10 boards and Kihei Clark (Woodland Hills, Calif.) had 12 points with three assists.

Virginia shot 45.3 percent from the floor and held Boston College to 30.9 percent shooting. The Cavaliers had 17 points off turnovers and led 32-16 in points in the paint.

HOW IT HAPPENED

Virginia used an 11-0 run early in the first half to take a 13-5 lead over Boston College. The Eagles closed the gap and eventually took a 25-18 lead on a 14-0 run with 4:05 to play in the first half. The Cavaliers countered with an 11-1 run to close the half and held the Eagles without a field goal for the final four minutes to lead 29-26 at the break.

BC hit a three to open the second half and tie the game. Virginia then went on a 12-2 run to take its largest lead, 41-31. The Cavaliers extended their lead to 56-39 with a 9-0 run with six minutes to play. BC didn’t get closer than 11 for the remainder of the game.

THE GAME BALL GOES TO

Jay Huff matched his career-high with 18 points and added eight rebounds and five blocked shots.

FROM TONY BENNETT

On how defense has changed since Gonzaga game:

“Well, yeah, we haven’t played an offensive team like Gonzaga, I mean they are as special as it gets this year. But I think, as we talked about Humble Pie doesn’t taste good, but it is a reality check that ‘hey look, we got to fight’, and we got to figure out some adjustments to help our personnel and just know that without that it’s going to be really difficult. I think we’ve made the right strides, I think our energy and our ball pressure has been better and just covering for each other more. We had some trouble on the offensive glass. If you look at it, when our defense was set, they scored a lot in that stretch off of some of our careless turnovers and then some of our, we didn’t block out whether they shot a kind of an air ball and they got offensive rebound. And then maybe at the end of the shot clock they put in three or four hard shots but otherwise, we really, when we were setting down, they didn’t get a lot of easy stuff. I thought that was our, slowly but surely, I felt like our mindset and our will, was we’re going to be hard and hard to score against and tough-minded, so I think that all that combined has made us better. And again, without Casey and Kadin [Shedrick] today and, Kody hasn’t played for bit, but those guys who know our system, we were doing it with some newer guys.”

NOTES

• UVA had a 10-0 run and closed the half with an 11-1 run
• UVA outscored BC 32-23 in the second half
• UVA is 2-0 when holding opponents to fewer than 50 points
• UVA has limited BC to 58 or fewer points in six of the last eight meetings
• Huff registered his seventh multi-block game of the season (34th career)
• Hauser tallied his third straight double-double with 17 points and 10 rebounds
• Hauser had a season-high two steals

UP NEXT

Virginia will be back home to host Notre Dame on Wednesday, Jan. 13 at 2:30 p.m. at John Paul Jones Arena. The game will be broadcast on ACC Network.