Virginia Basketball: 3 key storylines in Cavaliers matchup vs San Francisco
By Bryan Mauro
Pace of Play
Just to address the elephant in the room, the contrast in the pace of play between these two teams is stark. In fact, the Dons were one of the fastest teams in the country a season ago. They are going to be one of the fastest teams in the country again this year. San Francisco loves to run and they will run and play at a very fast pace against anyone, and Virginia is so deliberate with all of their actions and they have a knack for forcing everyone to play slow.
Virginia as everyone is accustomed to is the slowest playing team in the country. This isn’t some new thing with the Cavaliers this is how Tony Bennett coaches his team and while they may not be fun to watch as they grind out games and sometimes put up scores in the 40’s they still win a ton of games and are one of the best programs in the country.
How is Virginia going to react to the pressure that San Francisco is going to put on them? How will San Francisco react when Virginia ultimately forces them to play slow?
Every missed basket by Virginia may be bad news because the Dons are going to go extremely fast down the court for easy baskets. The Cavaliers have seen this happen to them twice in recent memory. In the NCAA Tournament, UMBC was an extremely fast-paced team that liked to go in transition, and we all know what happened there.
Last season Purdue, who is not an overly fast team but is fast enough crushed Virginia by 30 because the Boilers were able to get easy baskets in transition. Virginia is going to need to make some shots early, to slow this game down.
What about on a made Cavalier basket? This is when they are the deadliest. Coach Bennett can set his defense up and make the Dons slow way down and work in half-court. This is what Virginia tries to do to every opponent they play. It is already extremely hard to score on Virginia when they dial up the pack line in the half-court at times it can be impossible to even get a good look at the basket, much less make a basket.
San Francisco is going to have to counter this by making their threes and moving the ball. This is going to be something to watch because something must give and if recent history tells you anything it is going to be Virginia who dictates the pace of play.