After a week off, the Virginia men’s basketball team will get back to action Monday as it heads to Miami to face off against the Hurricanes.
Virginia (21-5, 10-4 ACC) played Miami (21-5, 10-4 ACC) earlier in the season in Charlottesville and defeated them 66-58. However, this is a completely different Virginia team than the one that overcame Miami in January.
Last month, there were whispers about Virginia having lost its mojo, when it dropped two straight ACC games on the road against Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. The defensive prowess many had come to expect from the Cavaliers had not been consistently present.
“We weren’t playing Virginia basketball even before [our loss to Virginia Tech],” senior forward Anthony Gill said. “Even with the games we were winning before that, that’s not the typical [Virginia] basketball that you would normally see from us.”
The Cavaliers have seemingly righted the ship and are now one of the hottest teams in the nation coming into this matchup, having won eight of their last nine games.
“We got back to the way we played basketball,” Gill said. “That whole Darius [Thompson game-winning] shot at Wake Forest put something in our tanks and gave us a lot of energy and let us know that we can really go out here and compete with every team in the ACC.”
It was a testament to the hard work coach Tony Bennett and his team put in during practice.
“I think we did a really good job in practice of really just getting back to the way we used to play defense and really emphasizing the defensive end as what’s kind of made this team successful in the past,” senior center Mike Tobey said.
Virginia’s only loss in its last nine games came against Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium on a controversial buzzer beater by Duke sophomore guard Grayson Allen.
“To say that was a hard fought game would be underselling it,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “Wow, what a great competitive game.”
The Cavaliers are now coming off of a dominating win over North Carolina State University, in which they clobbered the Wolfpack, 73-53, at John Paul Jones Arena.
“I thought we played great team ball [Monday], especially in the second half,” Bennett said.
The Cavaliers will now shift their attention to a Miami squad that is looking to get back on track after it was defeated handily by North Carolina, 96-71, this past weekend. Bennett knows Virginia can’t rest on its laurels and must prepare for what will be a tough road contest.
“We’ve got a little under a week to prepare for a good Miami team on their court,” Bennett said.
Monday night’s matchup will be a significant one for both teams, as Virginia and Miami are in contention for the ACC regular season title. Both teams sit one game behind the Tar Heels in the standings and hold the same conference and overall records. Thus, the winner of this game will have a leg up against the other in the fight for first as the season winds down.
“We try to take it one game at a time and learn things from this game, but also learn from the past,” sophomore forward Isaiah Wilkins said. “We just try to put ourselves in situations where we can always develop.”
Virginia will look to slow down senior guard Angel Rodriguez, who had a big game against Virginia earlier in the season, scoring 17 points in defeat. He is averaging 11.5 points per game this season.
The Cavaliers also hope to jumpstart senior guard Malcolm Brogdon from the opening tip. Brogdon, the team’s leading scorer, is fourth in the ACC at 17.8 points per game.
“Malcolm was efficient offensively in the lane and shooting threes [against NC State],” Bennett said. “For the people who make decisions on the next level, the ones that want guys that win and do things that show up in the win column, he is gold in that way.”
In addition to his scoring, Brogdon has been great defensively for Virginia.
“He did a good job defensively on [Duke freshman forward Brandon] Ingram and Grayson Allen and was against a different type of player [in Anthony ‘Cat’ Barber],” Bennett said. “I was really pleased. He was locked in.”
The game will take place in Coral Gables, Florida at the BankUnited Center. Tipoff is scheduled for Monday at 7 p.m.
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