Virginia Lose to 16 Seed Again
On Higher Basketball
Virginia Loses in a Way No One Will Ever Forget
Virginia'due south 74-54 defeat at the hands of the Academy of Maryland, Baltimore County, was a long time coming.
It was the starting time fourth dimension a No. 16 seed had beaten a No. 1 seed since the Sectionalization I men's tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 — that is 33 years and 136 matchups of 16 versus ane. The loss on Friday was also embedded in the very mode that Virginia has played basketball game under Coach Tony Bennett for the better part of the past decade.
There may non have been a better regular-flavor higher basketball team over the past five years than Virginia. Its 129 wins earlier the Atlantic Coast Briefing and Northward.C.A.A. tournaments are among the all-time in Division I. That figure is the highest in the brutal A.C.C., and Virginia has won 3 of the terminal 5 regular-flavor conference titles.
Simply in the N.C.A.A. tournament, the Cavaliers have underperformed. Every bit a top seed in 2014, they lost to 4th-seeded Michigan State in the round of sixteen. The next year, equally the highest-ranked No. 2 seed, they vicious in the 2nd circular. As a No. i seed in 2016, they suffered a fall-from-alee loss to tenth-seeded Syracuse in the circular of eight. When they lost in terminal twelvemonth'due south 2d round as a No. 5 seed, it was the beginning time in this bridge that they had not really been upset in the tournament.
This flavour was an farthermost version of who the Cavaliers are. With a 28-2 record — and then a three-0 stomp through the A.C.C. tournament — the Cavaliers were unequivocally the all-time team in Sectionalisation I, and they duly received the peak overall seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament.
And then information technology all went wrong. U.M.B.C., the champion of the America East Conference, shot 26 for 48 from the field, including 12 for 24 from beyond the iii-signal line. The underdogs were not intimidated. If annihilation, that problem belonged to Virginia, which through the flavour had fabricated nearly 40 percent of its three-indicate attempts but fabricated only 18.2 percent on Friday. The Retrievers played on the vulnerabilities Virginia had all along, and that had made many dubiety whether the Cavaliers could truly make a deep tournament run.
Prototype
Virginia does non play similar other teams. On criminal offense the Cavaliers milk the shot clock. Their defense is a specialized system. And they are south-fifty-o-w: this season, they ranked expressionless final in possessions per 40 minutes.
The combination left Virginia vulnerable when U.M.B.C. kept the score close — at one point making three unanswered 3-pointers and then that the halftime score was tied. Then the Retrievers went on a 16-2 run at the commencement of the second half. Virginia found itself down 12 with four minutes left, needing to make upwards a lead in a hurry: the ane thing the team was not designed to practice.
Juxtapose Virginia'southward postseason rails record with Virginia'south stylistic quirks, and ane is inescapably tempted to reach a particular decision. Information technology is the aforementioned conclusion that the baseball game full general managing director Billy Beane seemed to draw when explaining how his unusually assembled Oakland Athletics of the early on 2000s had tremendous regular-season success just never got to the World Series. "My stuff," he said (though he didn't say "stuff"), "doesn't work in the playoffs."
Beane said last week that his notorious line was a reference to the flukiness of baseball's playoffs, not to the way the A'southward played. The noise between Virginia's regular-season and postseason performances, he insisted, is most likely pure luck.
"It doesn't mean there's a systemic flaw in what they're doing," Beane added.
Virginia partisans might explicate the Cavaliers' postseason flailing as a fluke combined with injury trouble — the appendectomy that express Justin Anderson'south minutes in 2015; the unknown affliction that sidelined Isaiah Wilkins in last year's elimination game. Last week, right on cue, De'Andre Hunter, who was named the A.C.C.'s sixth man of the year, bankrupt his wrist.
But in that location are enough trademarks in Virginia'southward way of playing to argue that, yes, there may well exist something about Virginia's stuff that works less well in the playoffs.
Prototype
"Because of the way they play, every bit great equally it is — I love the way they play — in that location is a chance for a smaller margin of error," said Seth Greenberg, who went iii-three confronting Bennett's teams while coaching Virginia Tech and is now an ESPN analyst.
Because of the Cavaliers' style, they may be slightly more probable, in Greenberg's words, "to option a bad day to have a bad solar day."
And in March and early April's single-elimination environs, your bad solar day is your terminal twenty-four hours. Equally the Cavaliers learned Fri night in Charlotte, N.C.
Virginia'due south criminal offense is freewheeling and improvisational. Just it takes fourth dimension to work, and typically does not feature players who can create their own shots and become get a basket past themselves in crunchtime. In the final five minutes of 2015's loss to Michigan Country, for instance, Virginia trailed by 6 points with v minutes left — and proceeded to take just 11 shots, making merely v, including a pair of missed layups.
"When we needed a key stop or a saucepan to be made, information technology wasn't in that location," Bennett said afterward that game. "If you await at it, we took 17 more shots than they did. Nosotros had trouble finishing and trouble making shots."
Virginia plays the so-called Pack Line Defense. It was innovated by Bennett'south father, the sometime Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett. Information technology is a man-to-human being scheme, except defenders retreat to an invisible arc several feet shorter than the three-point line (the "pack line"). When the brawl goes to their man, they rush out; otherwise, they agglomeration together along the line, discouraging entry passes. It is constructive at denying mail service-ups and avoiding open up shots, but is susceptible to teams whose contested shots tend to notice their manner into the handbasket.
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Most of all, on offense and defense Virginia plays slow. Generally, this merely means that Virginia'south leads are larger than they appear. They are similar dog years: You lot have to arrange them. Scoring 8 unanswered points versus Virginia — which is going to brand you piece of work for it on offense and, when you lot're on defence, accept a agglomeration of time off the game clock — is not like scoring eight unanswered points confronting an average team.
"They go upwards on you," said the Northward Carolina senior Joel Berry II, who has played Virginia 8 times in his college career. "And then they put pressure on you, thinking, yous have to come down, and you're thinking you have to get a quick shot to try to get that lead back. And so next thing you know, you take a bad shot, and and then yous've got to get back down and play defense for xxx seconds again."
However, as with cigars, sometimes 8 points are just viii points. If your shots go in, your shots go in. That is how Syracuse was able to erase a 15-point deficit in a game's final ten minutes two Marches ago: "We merely got hot," Syracuse banana coach Adrian Autry said recently. And information technology is how U.M.B.C. built a moat of a pb.
Playing slowly leaves better teams more vulnerable to upsets, said John Harris, a mathematics professor at Furman University who, with 2 other faculty members, Kevin Hutson and Liz Bouzarth, has studied Northward.C.A.A. tournament upsets.
He groups teams into "Giants" and "Killers." The Giants are ever the better squad. The variable is what improves the underdogs' chances. The answer, it turns out, is when the Giants' giant-similar qualities are minimized, considering a slow pace means in that location is literally less basketball beingness played.
"Moving picture information technology in terms of an extreme case," Harris said. "If each team had one possession, a Killer is more probable to upset a Behemothic. The more than possessions you requite a Giant, the more probable it is they're able to dissever.
"It's the reason," he added, "why you don't play the World Series in one game."
The North.C.A.A. tournament is essentially six straight single-game World Series. And at present Virginia is going dwelling house.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/sports/virginia-upset.html