With a firm grip on the Atlantic Coast Conference lead and its first No. 1 ranking since the days when Ralph Sampson was patrolling the lane, Virginia now gets a break in the schedule following a hectic two-week period that saw the Cavaliers play five games over a 13-day span, winning four of them.
The Cavs (24-2, 13-1 ACC) get this weekend off, with their next outing at home Wednesday against Georgia Tech ending a span of eight days between games.
“We get to rest, but also get better,” Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett said after the 59-50 victory at Miami Wednesday night.
That should sound a warning to the rest of the league.
Though the media predicted a sixth-place finish for Virginia in preseason polling, it’s not a real shock to find the Cavaliers at the top of the standings. What is surprising is the margin they are leading by.
The Cavaliers already hold a three-game lead over second-place Duke and Clemson in the ACC standings and with only four games remaining, including one against a Pittsburgh team that is winless in league play, seem destined for their third regular-season conference title in the last five seasons.
“I think the league is so balanced and we’re not knocking people out,” Bennett said. “As I said, we’re winning games. It’s great! I feel good that we’re in this spot, but we’ve got more quality basketball.
“It’s a league that I thought at the start there would be a bunch of teams right in there, but how could I complain where we’re at? Some injuries I think have cost some teams. Notre Dame’s injuries, and Miami. Those are tough blows.”
As has become his custom, Bennett has built his team around a sound defense that leads the ACC by a wide margin. The Cavaliers have held opponents to just 52.8 points a game, an 11-point bulge over second-place Duke in the category. ACC teams have averaged just a point a game better.
No opponent, not even Duke which leads the ACC in scoring with an 88.2 average, has reached the 70-point level against the Cavaliers, and only seven have reached the 60-point mark. Opponents are shooting only 37.4 percent from the field overall, 29.2 on 3-pointers.
That is typical of Virginia under Bennett. Only three times in the previous eight seasons have the Cavaliers failed to hold their opponents in the 60s, and two of those occasions were his first two seasons. In the 2014-15 season, opponents averaged only 51.5 ppg. Four times in eight seasons the Cavaliers have held their foes to under 40-percent shooting, including last year when foes managed to shoot 39.8 percent.
Don’t think that doesn’t come into play in the minds of the opposing players when they take the court. Miami’s Jim Larranaga pointed to a couple of key early misses on routine shots that came into play in his Hurricanes’ early struggles against Virginia. A couple were air balls.
“We missed them out of a little bit of anxiousness and maybe a little bit of inexperience of being in this position where you have a chance to beat the No. 1 team in the country whose reputation precedes them as to how good they are defensively,” he said after his team shot only 21.4 percent from the field and scored just 16 points in the first half of their loss. “So you do tend to rush a little bit.”
The Hurricanes came alive in the second half, shooting 63.2 percent over the final 20 minutes, but they couldn’t quite get over the hump of their 11-point halftime deficit.
“Some of the credit has to go to Virginia’s defense,” Larranaga said. “They have that reputation for a very good reason. They’re very good at what they do.”
Though they are patient on offense, it’s not that the Cavaliers are holding the ball at the other end of the court to shorten up games, a not uncommon ploy of college teams near the top of defensive statistics. Their season average may be only 67.4 ppg, but they put up 93 in a win over Austin Peay early in the year and have been in the 70s in nine other games and 80s twice.
They take care of the basketball with a league-best plus-4.15 advantage in turnover margin.
“We’re not a knockout punch team,” Bennett said. “We’re just going to have to chip away and be in there defensively and offensively and, hopefully, it takes its toll over the course of the game.”
It’s a formula that looks to continue to pay dividends as the Cavaliers grind their way to a league title and challenge the school record book for wins in a season. The program record is 30, which they have accomplished three times, the last in the 2014-15 season. They are six short of that with four games left in the regular season plus the ACC and NCAA tournaments.
Bennett also had a 29-win season in 2016 when guard Malcolm Brogdon took the Cavs to within one game of the Final Four before a six-point loss to Syracuse in an NCAA regional final.
Could this be Bennett’s best team?
Miami’s Larranaga, a Virginia assistant back in the 1980s, pondered the question.
“That’s interesting,” Larranaga said. “They’re certainly having that kind of season, but it’s very hard to compare Malcolm Brogdon’s team to this team because that was a really sensational team, too.
“But the one thing I would say about Tony and his staff and his teams is that they have been very consistent at both ends of the court. And that’s what a coach looks for, consistency.”
