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The Virginia Cavaliers have reached college basketball’s Holy Grail once again. For the first time since 1984, the Hoos are the Who’s Who of their sport. They will try to reach their first national championship game when they face the Auburn Tigers in Saturday’s first national semifinal in Minneapolis.
We don’t have to tell the story of Virginia in the Final Four in one fell swoop. Let’s break down the Hoos into a few different sections.
In this article, let’s consider the scenarios the Cavaliers need to avoid, and the scenarios this team would love to produce.
Let’s begin by stating the obvious: Of course we know what kind of game Virginia would like to play — and avoid — against Auburn. That doesn’t require any explanation. What I will attempt to do here is provide some Final Four examples of how games can evolve in ways which are either beneficial or harmful for Virginia on Saturday.
A good example — “good” in the sense of being illustrative, not positive — is the 2014 Final Four semifinal between Connecticut and Florida.
Florida was a No. 1 seed at that Final Four, UConn a 7 seed. Florida had been the far more successful and cohesive team during the whole season, but UConn was the white-hot team which found its stride at just the right time. Florida had a point guard named Scottie Wilbekin who was a noticeably well-rounded player. He led the offense well. He put his teammates in the right positions. He dictated tempo. He was a little more dependent on scoring himself to lift his team’s offense, but he still could influence a game without scoring.
Wilbekin was Ty Jerome, only more inclined to get his own shot and carry the workload for his offense.
UConn had Ryan Boatright, the quickest player on the floor in that Final Four game. Wilbekin was an outstanding player from November through March, whereas Boatright struggled to find his game for much of the year. However, in that one-on-one matchup, Boatright — who had awakened from a winter-long slumber — came alive and torched Wilbekin with his speed. Wilbekin was shell-shocked. Boatright boatraced him. UConn won comfortably.
Virginia hopes that Jared Harper — whose 2019 season acquired a trajectory similar to Boatright’s — will not dominate Jerome with his speed and quickness.
I don’t have a strong feel for what will happen in this matchup. Accordingly, I don’t have a strong feel for what will happen in Auburn-Virginia. However, I do think that whereas Wilbekin often needed to score more for Florida to be effective, Jerome is much more clearly a player who can control this game by playing strong defense and avoiding turnovers. Jerome doesn’t have to light up Auburn for UVA to win; he DOES have to contain Harper for the Hoos to prevail.
Here are some other scenarios to consider:
When Tony Bennett’s father, Dick Bennett, made his one Final Four with Wisconsin in 2000, the Badgers — though certainly defended well by Tom Izzo’s best team at Michigan State — were also awed by the occasion and its enormity. They never settled down on offense, tossed up a ton of bricks, and never fundamentally made the kinds of adjustments which could create excellent scoring chances against a powerful, athletic, long defense.
Virginia was bothered by Oregon’s athleticism and length in the Sweet 16. It was bothered by Florida State’s size in the ACC semifinals. Auburn does not suffer in a comparison with Oregon or Florida State. AU has more speed than those teams and more skill than Oregon, though the loss of Chuma Okeke puts Auburn a notch below Florida State in terms of low-post prowess.
This invites a two-sides-of-the-coin scenario: A) Virginia has to snap out of bad sequences, something Dick Bennett could not produce with Wisconsin 19 years ago. Tony Bennett has to find ways to get to the tin if Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, and De’Andre Hunter don’t make threes early in this game. Virginia will need its Plan B to swiftly emerge if the Plan A doesn’t take hold.
B) This is somewhat related to scenario A, but also exists on its own terms: Minimizing droughts is important, but the larger reality beyond that need is that Virginia might simply have to accept the reality of an ugly, frustrating game. I don’t say this in the sense that Virginia should aim low or carry modest standards — it shouldn’t. I am trying to say that much as Virginia realized against Oregon that defense would be its main path to victory, and that its profound struggles on offense could not be allowed to ruin the game or the season, so it must also be against Auburn: Virginia needs to be mentally prepared to mud-wrestle and not panic if it plays a “2000 Wisconsin” first half and trails by seven points at halftime. Teams have panicked at the Final Four when shots don’t fall. Virginia has to be ready to defend at a high level for 40 minutes, no matter how ugly its offense might be.
That’s not defeatism; that’s preparation.
This leads to the example of how to do it right at the Final Four from a Virginia perspective: Butler.
The Bulldogs and Brad Stevens most closely model the Dick Bennett coaching ethos, passed on to other coaches and, of course, Tony Bennett as well. The Bennett Way became The Butler Way AND the Virginia Way — not either-or, but both-and.
Look at Butler’s two national semifinal wins in two appearances in 2010 and 2011.
The 2010 win over Izzo and Michigan State was produced primarily by hounding the Spartans into 16 turnovers. Even then, Butler barely won — by a single bucket. The game was ugly. It was likely to be nothing other than ugly. Butler accepted the reality of profound imperfections, played through those many flaws, rode out the bad stretches, and prevailed with its defense. This was much like Virginia versus Oregon.
The 2011 win over VCU — which, while not as athletic as 2019 Auburn, still had some highly skilled perimeter players — was a product of three things:
A) Allowing two players — Jamie Skeen and Bradford Burgess — to score all the points while shutting out the rest of the VCU supporting cast, something which also came to the fore against Purdue and the plan to put everything on Carsen Edwards. (Edwards decided to imitate Steph Curry, which very nearly ruined UVA’s conceptually sound plan.)
B) Offensive rebounds: 15-5, Butler, against VCU.
Virginia will try — and is in good position — to replicate its offensive rebounding success against Auburn without Okeke there in the paint for the Tigers.
C) The perimeter shooters getting hot.
Butler had Shelvin Mack go off for 24 points against VCU. If Kyle Guy or Ty Jerome hang 24 on Auburn, UVA’s chances rise a great deal.
Virginia has scenarios to replicate and scenarios to avoid at the Final Four. Now you have a larger sense of what the Hoos need to do to make it to Monday Night.
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