Virginia’s NIT chances where flushed down the toilet Saturday afternoon at the JPJ as Tony Bennett’s Wahoos fell to Boston College 63-44. Forty-four freaking points at home for an ACC team in 2011 is unacceptable no matter who the coach is. The Hoos were up seven points at the break.
UVA’s Joe Harris had ten rebounds, but 6-3 Colorado Springs product Reggie Jackson sparked BC’s offense and scored twenty five points for the Eagles.
Coach Bennett said after the game about what his team might have been improved upon Saturday, "Get the ball across half-court, I believe, and then run some offense. We talk about being aggressive, we work really hard to get our people in the middle and up the sideline, we just want to really attack. But there were some times where there was some hesitancy, and times we just had to break it and get a score. But we weren’t able to do that and the turnovers taking time off the clock, it certainly hurt us."
The Hoos shot an awful 19% from beyond the arch, and weren’t much better overall from the field as they only shot 32% for the game.
Tony Bennett’s quotes about the Hoos’s defensive play after the game, "We decided to trap the post, which we only do sometimes, so we needed to come and be aggressive with the trap or to not trap at all. But today we were in no-mans-land. Whether it was miscommunication on a dribble hand off, if we were switching it or we were not, or even just transition defense, we were below average or poor. It really started spilling over into the rest of the game. Sometimes we stayed too long and left a shooter wide open, while sometimes we wouldn’t stay at all. We had a poor performance on both ends, but defensively that was difficult for us.”
Virginia was led by Assane Sene and Mustapha Farrakhan with ten points. Farrakhan had a horrific shooting game as he consistently missed easy looks on a 4-13 shooting night. Sammy Zeglinski was off as well finishing 1-10 shooting the basketball.
The Cavaliers try to scrape their collective souls off the hardwood as they return to action Tuesday night as the Wolfpack from NC State comes to town for a 7 p.m. tip.