Virginia lost the three main players off their 2019 national championship team. It was reasonable to expect that they would take a large step back, and to be candid, they are not at all in the championship talk so far this year. But, in the last poll, they moved up to #9, which ain't bad.
What is amazing about this team is the defensive numbers they are putting up. OK, everyone knows that Tony Bennett's teams always play tough defense. No surprise there. But in their first two games their opponent scored the exact same number of points - 34. Thirty-four points in a modern basketball game?! Twice in a row? Granted their opponents are not Final Four likelies, but Syracuse is from the ACC, year in and year out one of the top two or three conferences in the country, coached by a Hall of Fame coach. And James Madison was predicted to be fourth in the Colonial, which is one of the better mid-level conferences. And, after all THIRTY-FOUR points? Even the local high school team could jack up enough threes to make twelve of them and get that many points, couldn't it? Pretty amazing stuff.
I don't figure Virginia's opponents will average that for the season, and they probably will not return to the Final Four. But people tend to be dazzled by five-star athleticism and forget about fundamentals and defense. And Virginia has those. And they have Tony Bennett.
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