Nearly every one of Virginia’s 2019 NCAA Tournament games involved some level of stress. The level was nearly unbearable in some games, with the Hoos trailing Gardner-Webb in the first round, barely eking out a win over Oregon, and needing last-second buckets to defeat Purdue, Auburn, and Texas Tech.
The outlier was the second round win over Oklahoma. Jumping out to a seven-point lead out of the gates, the Hoos looked dominant from the beginning. They smothered the Oklahoma offense in the early going, with Oklahoma’s only points in the first six minutes coming off a couple of long threes.
But then it happened. The cold streak that became almost synonymous with Virginia basketball, at least in 2020. That same cold streak was never as big of a problem with the star-studded team of a year ago. But the Hoos were still susceptible to such a stretch, going about 5 and a half minutes without scoring, and falling prey to a 10-0 Oklahoma run.
It put the Hoos four points down with around 10 minutes to play in the first half. But the Hoos kept going, never faltering, as they slowly worked their way back to an advantage.
And in that response lies the reason that Virginia was able to win this game so easily, perhaps one of the things that helped them to win it all. No longer were they the team living in the shadow of one of the biggest upsets in sports history. No more did they give off the deer-in-headlights feeling that embodied the first half of the Gardner-Webb game.
The back end of the first half was more of a continuation of the second half performance of the first round than anything else. After failing to score for more than five minutes and allowing that large Oklahoma run, the Hoos turned the game on its head.
They went on a tear, suffocating their opponents to hold them to a five minute scoring drought. That drought helped Virginia to retake a commanding lead. They ripped off an 18-2 run to go back up by 12 points. And, for once, the announcer’s comment about how it’s so tough to come back from a deficit against Virginia felt true.
Maybe it was only a 10 point lead, but it felt like so much more. Finally, the analysts who claimed that “a 10 point Virginia lead feels more like 20” (looking at you, Cory Alexander) were right.
It was a complete performance in the opening period, save the cold stretch and a couple of other insignificant errors. And of course, the biggest part of it was the pack-line defense. Oklahoma had no room to work with inside the three-point arc, with only 10 of their 22 points coming from two-point range.
The only reason that the Sooners stayed in the game during the first half was because of the efforts of Brady Manek. All 13 of his points were scored in the first half, and he accounted for well over half of his team’s scoring in that half.
The absence of that explosive scorer in the second meant that Oklahoma had nowhere to turn to. None of the advantages laid with them. The Hoos simply outworked their victims, coming up with seven more rebounds, three more steals, and in the end, 12 more points.
In fact, the scoring margin in regulation of this game would turn out to be more than double that of regulation in the following four games.
If that stat doesn’t tell you how much of an outlier this game was during the 2019 Tournament, I don’t know what will. To be frank, it felt weird watching Virginia play basketball with a “March Madness” logo on the floor and not feeling some kind of stress or uncertainty about the outcome.
Maybe the best example of how odd it felt was conveyed in the headline for the AP report of the game. “Virginia finally gets easy NCAA win 63-51 over Oklahoma” were the words chosen to sum up the game. It’s true that for once it was definitely a relief to kick back and enjoy a tournament game with the Hoos in it.
And there was plenty to enjoy within the win. Besides the actual act of winning, and winning soundly at that, there were a number of things to celebrate.
First and foremost, the smothering defense that allowed Oklahoma one more point in the whole game than they scored in one half of their first round. It was a vintage UVa defensive performance, allowing no easy buckets. The only thing that Oklahoma managed to do was hit threes, shooting a solid 36.4% from downtown.
Other than that, there was nothing doing for the Sooners on the offensive side of the ball. Mamadi Diakite chipped in for that aspect of the game, tallying three blocks. But he had a much bigger impact besides his normal habit of erasing opposition shots.
Mamadi had 14 points, good enough to be the leading scorer for the game. He got the starting spot over veteran Jack Salt for the first time, and Bennett’s decision in giving it to him was certainly validated by Mamadi’s performance. He also brought down nine rebounds in addition to his impressive numbers in other categories.
As Grant Hill said on the broadcast, “Mamadi, MamaDO,” implying that Mamadi can—and did—do it all.
But while Mamadi provided some individual brilliance, this was a team effort. It takes more than one player to earn your first stress-free tournament win in two years. And with five and a half minutes to go in a row came the play that summed it up.
It started with a takeaway by Ty Jerome at midcourt, one of three he stole during the game. He then passed it off to De’Andre Hunter, waiting at the top of the top of the key. The soon-to-be lottery pick took a couple of dribbles and found a cutting Kyle Guy, who, running underneath the basket, threw a no-look behind-the-back dime to Braxton Key, who laid it in to complete a beautiful sequence.
The whole thing took all of six seconds. Who knew that Virginia could break like that?
But maybe it wasn’t the ability to turn a quick play around for an easy bucket that was on display in that moment. Instead, it showed how Virginia could adapt to any little thing, no matter how trivial.
They did it in the first round, coming from 14 down to defeat a team in unprecedented circumstances. They did it again in this moment, showcasing the ability to do something that has been otherwise nonexistent in Virginia basketball. And they would do it again many times over the course of their national title run.
But in this moment, still more than two weeks away from that glorious feeling of success, Virginia was looking like a team that had it in them to win it all.
The Hoos were on the road to the Sweet Sixteen.