Virginia laid an egg against arch-rival Virginia Tech Thursday night at the John Paul Jones Arena as they lost 76-71. It took a toughly-contested and desperation three-pointer by Sam Zeglinski to send it to overtime, but the thuggish Hokies were simply to much for the struggling Wahoos.
Tech (16-3, 3-2) was led once again by Malcolm Delaney who scored 27 points on a 9-24, 0-6 from three point-land performance. The game was marred by an ugly and downright nasty elbow to the face of Virginia’s Jeff Jones which resulted in Tech’s Jeff Allen being thrown out of the game. Tech’s J.T. Thompson scored 15 points in the second half and overtime combined, and Virginia did not have an answer for him down the stretch.
At one point in the second half the Hoos looked like they were running away with the game as the lead reached 12, but Tech went on a 13-0 run to again take the lead. Down the stretch in regulation the Hoos looked befuddled on offense and committed way to many turnovers to have a chance to win the game (16). More importantly, Virginia did not run a cohesive offense during the last critical minutes of regulation. This game was the closest that docile Tony Bennett has come to getting a technical foul as he was constantly on the refs for their horrible officiating. This game was the worst officiated game I have ever seen at UVA.
If you look at the box score, Tech won this game at the free-throw line (16-20), and they played like they wanted this game more than Virginia. Virginia’s Landesberg, who scored 18, did not play well down the stretch and committed several key turnovers as he continually tried to force the action late.