Virginia basketball returned to John Paul Jones Arena for their home opener against Saint Francis (PA), racing to a 45-13 halftime lead before cruising to an eventual 76-51 victory. Saint Francis is not a very good team, and they were even worse today as starting point guard Ramiir Dixon-Conover was forced to sit with a lower leg injury.
Still, the confident victory was important for a team coming off their first loss to a non-power conference school since UMBC. It was a nearly flawless first half, and while the Hoos actually lost the second, that was due in large part to Tony Bennett shuffling lineups and giving guys time. Ultimately, Virginia got the bounce-back win that they needed as they build towards the ACC/B1G Challenge in about a week. Here are five observations from the win.
1) Defense is restored
The game wasn’t devoid of mistakes, but on the whole the defense exhibited was a lot closer to the expected level. Virginia picked up shot clock violation number three of the season early on, holding the Red Flash to 13 points in the first half. Again, Saint Francis was missing their starting point guard, which was going to damage their offense regardless.
But there’s no denying that the Hoos looked like a well-oiled machine back there despite a couple of hiccups. This looked like the familiar suffocating defense.
2) Shedrick looked good
Kadin looked smooth and in control as he coasted to 12 points and 8 rebounds in 17 minutes. This was the first time that we’ve ever really seen the redshirt freshman get quality minutes, and he did not disappoint. Some of his points came off putbacks, some from post moves, and two of them came off of a silky smooth mid-range jumper.
We don’t want to set too much store by performances against weaker teams, but this was a very good sign. If Shedrick can play well in the coming games, it’ll provide yet another scoring option.
3) This team is so deep
The emergence of Shedrick as yet another legitimate scoring threat is a good segue into talking about just how deep this team is. The most striking stat from this game has to be that 11 players played double-digit minutes. Nobody got more than 23 minutes, with four players scoring in double figures in spite of that.
Jay Huff unsurprisingly walked all over Saint Francis’s small lineup, while Sam Hauser was money in the mid-range game. Elsewhere, Trey Murphy collected his second massive poster of the season on his way to 10 points, and Tomas Woldetensae hit back-to-back threes. Reece Beekman dished out 4 assists as well in his first collegiate start.
The bottom line? This team is very, very deep.
4) Bennett has multiple sets at his disposal
Virginia came out against Towson in the new five-out offense, and it seemed to pay off, resulting in 89 points. That wasn’t the case in game two, with the Hoos barely eking to 60 points on the back of a rough offensive day. Now in game three, Bennett has gone almost exclusively to the mover-blocker offense, and again it payed off with a huge first half.
We haven’t seen much continuity ball screen yet, but that represents a third type of offense that Virginia can run. Mixing those three sets will play to Virginia’s advantage, and each presents a unique look that will help them put points on the board.
5) Clark, three-point shooting the worries
It’s still early, but there’s a niggling worry that Kihei Clark won’t be as good as last year. And that’s fine—Clark doesn’t have to carry the load like he did a year ago—but regardless, Kihei needs to be better than he has been. While he did have three assists in 15 minutes today, that comes without any accompanying points, dragging his season average down to just over 5 points per game.
Kihei also hasn’t hit a three so far this season, and the rest of the team hasn’t been so proficient in that category either. After making a very impressive 15 out of 29 attempts against Towson, the Hoos made only 3 of their 12 three balls against San Francisco, and were even worse against Saint Francis, going 5-22 for 22.7%. This team showed that they can shoot it in their first game, so it’s not a huge worry, but it is something that needs to be monitored.
Overall, this was a good game, with Virginia rebounding strongly from the loss as they start to move towards tougher opponents in the coming weeks.
Image – UVA Athletics