By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com
CHARLOTTESVILLE –– There’s no easy remedy for what ails the University of Virginia men’s basketball team. UVA shoots poorly from the perimeter and has few players who can create shots for themselves off the dribble. The Cavaliers defend tenaciously, but they don’t have an abundance of height or athleticism.
“We’ve got a small margin of error,” said Tony Bennett, who’s in his 13th season as Virginia’s head coach.
That was apparent again Wednesday night. Against Clemson, an opponent the Wahoos have dominated under Bennett, their flaws were exposed. Virginia shot 21.7 percent from 3-point range (36.6 percent overall), turned the ball over 14 times, and gave up eight offensive rebounds in a 67-50 loss at John Paul Jones Arena.
Virginia (7-5 overall 1-1 ACC) had won 11 straight games in the series and hadn’t lost to the Tigers at JPJ during Bennett’s tenure.
Clemson (9-4, 1-1) scored 24 points off turnovers, shot 47.5 percent from the floor, and outrebounded Virginia 35-26. The Tigers’ reserves outscored their UVA counterparts 17-0.
“When your margin of error is pretty thin, all those things matter,” Bennett said.
Virginia, which trailed by eight at the break, surged early in the second half. A 8-0 run capped by a Kihei Clark 3-pointer cut Clemson’s lead to two with 17:33 to play, and the fans at JPJ came alive.
Alas, they had little to cheer the rest of the way. After a Clemson miss, the Hoos took possession with a chance to tie or take the lead. But they turned the ball over, and the Tigers ran off seven straight points to regain control.
The Hoos went more than 11 minutes without making a field goal, a stretch that Armaan Franklin finally ended with a pullup jumper at the 6:30 mark. By then, Clemson held a commanding lead, and there was no late-game drama.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Bennett said. “That’s real. That’s a very solid team we played, and we’ll just we’ll keep working to improve. I just kept telling the guys, ‘Just keep battling and keep battling and keep trying to be as tough as you can.’ ”
Sophomore guard Reece Beekman led the Cavaliers with a career-high 20 points. His previous high was 12 points, and he matched that with 6:28 to play in the first half. Until Wednesday night, when he was 3 for 5 from beyond the arc, the 6-foot-3 Beekman had never made more than one trey in a college game.
Against Clemson, Beekman hit his first 3-point attempt and shot with confidence thereafter.
“It felt good,” he said, “because I’ve been struggling a little bit. I’ve been coming in extra and getting shots up, so seeing a couple fall tonight it felt good.”
Beekman “played a good game,” Bennett said, “and we need probably three or four guys to be chipping in and doing that.”
Franklin, a 6-foot-4 transfer from Indiana, continued to struggle from 3-point range, missing 6 of 7 attempts Wednesday. He was 4 for 6 from inside the arc, however, and finished with 13 points and a team-high eight rebounds.
For the Cavaliers’ frontcourt players, this was a game to forget. Jayden Gardner missed 7 of 9 shots from the floor. Igor Milicic Jr. went scoreless in 10 minutes off the bench. Kadin Shedrick blocked a career-high six shots, but he and UVA’s other center, Francisco Caffaro, had two points and two rebounds between them.
Clemson, meanwhile, received significant contributions from 6-foot-10 PJ Hall, 6-foot-8 Hunter Tyson, 6-foot-6 Naz Bohannon and 6-foot-7 Ian Schieffelin.
“Our big guys aren’t going to give us a ton of points,” Bennett said, “but they have to keep challenging themselves to be on the glass, to get us some offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, and just anchor that defense.”
The Hoos don’t have many interior options, and Shedrick and Caffaro “are getting great opportunities,” Bennett said. “These are the opportunities that they desired, they wanted, that I want them to get. And you grow through these experiences when you go against those physical good players. And you just keep showing up and getting better.”
On several possessions, Clemson scored on contested late-clock shots, negating the Cavaliers’ solid defense.
“It kind of stings a little,” said Beekman, who had a game-high three steals.
Bennett said: “That seems like it’s happened a lot this year, where you’re there [defensively] and guys, whether it’s a bank shot or a tough shot, [score anyway] … We have some challenges, obviously, to score the basketball, and so we’re trying to hang our hat on the defense. So those did hurt certainly.”
From a team that won the ACC’s regular-season title in 2020-21, Virginia lost six of its top eight scorers. Three of those players are on NBA rosters this season. This always figured to be a challenging season for the Cavaliers, who have become fixtures in the NCAA tournament under Bennett, and more tests await them in the ACC.
“You keep battling,” Bennett said. “You just keep working. We’ve played good stretches of basketball. and we’ve played some poor stretches of basketball, and that’s playing itself out.”
Bennett didn’t mince words with his players after the game. “I said, ‘We’re going to find out in this room [if] we have the group of guys we can go through adversity with, and then keep trying to grow from it and just keep showing up and keep knocking.’ That’s all you can do in these spots. But can we get this turned around? Absolutely. You pursue that, and no matter what you just keep getting better.”