Offensive rebound?
With March's big tests arrival, Virginia needs to bounce back from a rare shellacking.
Associated Press photo
Everyone’s got a plan, the renowned boxer/philosopher Mike Tyson once opined, until they get punched in the face.
That indignity arrived last Saturday afternoon for Virginia’s men’s basketball team, which carried a nine-game winning streak and aspirations of an ACC regular-season championship into Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Cavaliers limped home with lips bloodied and psyches bruised after a 76-51 thrashing that wasn’t as close as the score suggested.
It was the kind of rare butt-whipping that even outstanding teams occasionally suffer during a long and taxing season. Contenders shrug it off and use it for motivation. Lesser squads can allow it to haunt them.
The Cavaliers need to decide which of those they are, and quickly.
After spending 15 years acquiring the taste of Tony Bennett’s deliberate, defense-first style, Virginia fans needed some time to embrace first-year coach Ryan Odom’s fast-paced attack. Bennett’s name and signature now grace the court at John Paul Jones Arena, but winning 25 of his first 29 games has given Odom some cachet, too.
His team, quickly assembled literally from around the world, is deep, versatile and entertaining. But the top-ranked Blue Devils exposed their occasional defensive liabilities and negated the 3-point shooting that had carried Virginia to a No. 11 national ranking by game time. (They fell to No. 13 this week.)
(Credit, too, to Virginia’s women, who enter this week’s ACC tournament in good position to earn their first NCAA tournament berth since 2018.)
Fortunately for Odom and his men’s team, there’s a chance to redeem themselves. Saturday’s rout came on the final day of February, and when the calendar turns to March, things get real.
Virginia has two winnable games remaining before the ACC tournament, both at home: Tuesday night against Wake Forest and a revenge outing Saturday against Virginia Tech, which handed the Cavaliers a triple-overtime loss in Blacksburg on New Year’s Eve.
One win assures the Cavaliers the No. 2 seed and some momentum going into the ACC tournament quarterfinals. A loss in either, though, could ratchet up the pressure to avoid yet another early end to a memorable season.
Let’s be clear: This Virginia team bears almost no resemblance to any edition of Bennett’s remarkable tenure in Charlottesville. Junior guard Elijah Gertrude is the only player left who suited up under Bennett, and he’s not in the main rotation (although he did provide the highlight of the season with a spectacular dunk against N.C. State last week).
No one can ever take away the 2019 national championship banner that hangs in JPJ, but remember just how close calls Bennett’s Cavaliers needed to win it: the first-round deficit against Gardner-Webb; the miraculous Kihei Clark-to-Mamadi Diakete play to force overtime against Purdue; Kyle Guy’s three clutch free throws against Auburn; and a double-digit rally in the national final against Texas Tech.
Bookending that memorable run was a second-half collapse against Syracuse in the regional finals; an historic 1-vs.-16 loss to Odom’s UMBC team in 2018; and first-round exits in 2021, ’23 and ’24, including Clark’s last-minute brain cramp against Furman in 2023.
In many ways, Virginia’s basketball season has mirrored the school’s 2025 football success. The Cavaliers have looked elite at times, but also needed to eke out several narrow victories in a conference that’s inarguably the weakest of the Power Four. And Duke denied them a shot at the title.
Odom’s squad has the size, depth and firepower to earn a rematch against the Blue Devils in the ACC tournament, and to make some noise deep into March. But the Cavaliers need to flush Saturday’s debacle, shore up their deficiencies and show the arrogance of champions to do so.
According to NCAA statistics, Virginia is the ACC’s best offensive rebounding team. We’ll see just how well the Cavaliers rebound from some rare adversity.