CHARLOTTE - Two weeks after Virginia suffered a humbling loss in Durham by 26 points against No. 1 ranked Duke, the Cavaliers had a second chance against the Blue Devils in Charlotte with an ACC Tournament Championship up for grabs.
UVA fell just short of a trophy in a 74-70 loss, however, as Duke picked up its ACC record 24th conference tournament championship. While the Hoos could be described as shell-shocked in their prior matchup, they looked the part of a more confident and capable team Saturday night in the rematch. From a 26-point beatdown at Cameron Indoor Stadium to what was really a one possession game at the Spectrum Center, one possession away from an ACC Championship.
“Our guys stood tall, we obviously didn’t win,” Virginia coach Ryan Odom said. “Duke made the plays that they needed to make down the stretch to finish it out. I thought we had a good opportunity there when it was tied, but it just didn’t go our way today.”
The Cavaliers found their footing early on in Charlotte with Malik Thomas hitting a 3-pointer for a 9-6 advantage and their first lead in either matchup with the Blue Devils. That triple was part of an early 10-0 run as Virginia took its largest lead of the night at 12-6 with 14:40 to go in the first half.
What played out from there was a back-and-forth tussle between what clearly looked like the two best teams in the conference. The game was tied 12 different times with 16 lead changes, including the Hoos fighting back to tie the game at 66-66 with 3:10 left in the game. From there everything went Duke’s way, though.
After forcing a missed 3-pointer by Isaiah Evans, Cayden Boozer found himself with a clean offensive rebound and put back on the weak side to give Duke a 68-66 lead. UVA followed up with a shot clock violation and then a Thijs De Ridder foul to gift Evans 2 free throws and a 4-point lead. Virginia would see daylight for a split second after Ugo Onyenso scored, Cameron Boozer missed 2 free throws, and Thomas found himself on the other end with a chance to tie the game with free throws.
Thomas missed the front end of the one-and-one opportunity, though, despite being 5-5 from the stripe prior.
“It’s a tough one, free throws are something I’m really good at,” Thomas said. “It was unfortunate that I missed that, but we just know how much better we are than that.”
Thomas (18 points) and Sam Lewis (17) led Virginia in scoring, a vast improvement on their performances from February when the two guards combined to go 0-14 from the field. Onyenso continued his dominant ACC Tournament run with 6 points, 8 rebounds, and 9 blocked shots, the second most in a single ACC Tournament game. With the 9 blocks, Onyenso finished the ACC Tournament with 21 total blocks in three games, smashing the previous record of 14 by Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan in 1995.
Onyenso also played a key role in slowing down ACC Player of the Year Cameron Boozer, who finished with 13 points on 3-17 shooting while still earning ACC Tournament MVP honors. Duke was led on the night by Evans with 20 points on 4-8 shooting from 3-point range and Cayden Boozer, who tied his career-high of 16 points set just a night earlier against Clemson.
Now all that awaits the Cavaliers is finding out their NCAA Tournament seeding and location with ESPN’s latest projections slotting them in for a No. 3 seed. They will try to use the sting of the ACC Championship loss to vault them into the postseason.
“We’re one possession away from winning that ball game and being ACC Champions,” Thomas said. “So we got a lot more basketball to play, like I said. So we’re gonna learn from this and I’m gonna get better as an individual and we’re gonna get better as a team.”
Here are a few takeaways from Virginia’s loss to Duke in the ACC Championship Game.
Duke Secures Back-Breaking Offensive Rebounds
For a long stretch, it felt like every call, every 50/50 ball, and every lucky break went the way of the Blue Devils, often leaving the UVA bench exasperated. The clearest indicator of the reality of this feeling is the fact Duke grabbed 20 offensive rebounds, the most given up by Virginia this season.
“We missed some rebounds that we normally take,” Cavalier forward Thijs De Ridder said. “Made some stupid fouls and we’re normally smarter on that end.”
The two most costly of the 20 offensive boards given up came in the game’s final stages. The first happened after Isaiah Evans missed a 3-point attempt and no one was there on the weak side to box out Cayden Boozer for an easy putback that gave Duke a 68-66 lead. The second was after Ugonna Onyenso registered his 9th block of the night, but Cameron Boozer was able to collect his own miss and kick out to reset the shot clock and ice the game.
“Being ready to get the 50/50 balls, be ready to get every rebound,” Onyenso said. “I feel like Duke only did two things that made us lose the game today.”
One of the challenges facing the Hoos on the defensive glass was a vastly different Duke lineup than the one they faced previously in Durham. With injuries to Caleb Foster and Pat Ngongba, Duke switched things up and benched ACC Defensive Player of the Year Maliq Brown, the team’s only center, and went with Cameron Boozer at the five spot. This meant Virginia’s centers played largely away from the basket, leaving a lengthy Duke team room to feast on the glass.
“It’s a totally different animal, which we haven’t really seen a lot,” Odom said. “I thought our guys did a really good job. Had we come up with some of those maybe the game with a little bit different story, but we didn’t, and we’ve just got to be better in that regard.”
Odom acknowledged this might be a situational problem with a Duke team more prepared to play smaller, but not give up size on the glass. Despite having 20 offensive rebounds, Duke was held to just 13 second chance points. Either way winning more of the 50/50 balls will be a big point of emphasis for Virginia heading into the NCAA Tournament.
“I think there’s some times where we just had some lapses and we just didn’t do it,” UVA forward Devin Tillis said. “Ultimately, it’s a pride thing. We’re going to get back watching film. The coach is probably going to get on us a little bit and then we’re going to get back to doing it in practice and, you know, hopefully get better and improve on it.”
Will The Real ACC Defensive Player Of The Year Stand Up?
For Hoo fans, the true ACC Defensive Player of the Year was on the court on Saturday night in Charlotte and no, it was not Duke’s Maliq Brown. Ugonna Onyenso continued to terrorize would-be shots around the rim during this ACC Tournament run and showed voters just 13 votes in third place was probably not an accurate representation of his impact on the defensive end.
Onyenso recorded 9 blocked shots to bring his tournament total to 21 total blocks, eclipsing one of the league’s most dominant bigs ever in Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan and his long-standing record of 14 blocks in the 1995 ACC Tournament. Of course, Ryan Odom would be very familiar with that record because Duncan played for Ryan’s dad Dave, but Onyenso was not aware until his coach pointed it out in the postgame press conference.
“He had 14 in three games, you had 21,” Odom said. “That’s pretty impressive, and one of the best shot blockers ever, and you were doing it against big time players in our conference.”
What’s even more impressive is that Onyenso continued to deter anyone who came into the paint, while only picking up 3 total fouls in the entire ACC Tournament. This while also swatting shots with enough gusto to ricochet off the backboard and lead to a fastbreak against Duke.
“Blocking shots is what I do, and I’m really good at it,” Onyenso said. “Opportunities like this help me showcase the fact that I’m still good at it if I’m playing against the top players in the league. I didn’t know about the record. I just came into today’s game ready to play. Whatever it takes to help the team win.”
Onyenso certainly showcased his talent against one of the league’s best in Cameron Boozer, who because of Duke playing without a center for the majority of the game was the 7-footer’s main assignment. This called for Onyenso to do something he’s rarely done this season and defend out to the perimeter against a future NBA Draft lottery pick.
“I’m not really used to being on the perimeter, but I think I did a really good job when it came to being disciplined and staying on my feet when he shot faked and went to the rim,” Onyenso said. “I tell myself I can play down low, I can play up top too.”
In his previous matchup against Duke, Onyenso admitted his timing was off which is a problem against Boozer, who utilizes the pump fake to draw fouls. Boozer had 12 free throws in Durham two weeks ago. This time though, Onyenso held Boozer to 3-17 shooting or 17.6% from the field, the ACC Player of the Year’s worst shooting game of the season.
Onyenso was modest afterwards when asked if he frazzled the conference’s top player, but his teammate Dallin Hall said it was clear that Boozer had a tough night.
“It’s frustrating, I played against him all summer and he was blocking shots,” Hall said. “You could sense some frustration. This guy is the best rim protector, I think, in the country. He’s a really great player. He made some big plays down the stretch. But you could tell Ugo was definitely getting him frustrated.”
Onyenso further cemented himself in the UVA record books this week as well. The Nigerian is now up to 101 blocks on the season, passing Ralph Sampson for 4th on the UVA single-season shot block list and now sits just 3 blocks away from moving to No. 2 all time. Sampson had 103 blocks in both 1980-81 and 1982-83. Sampson’s best season came in 1979-80 with 157 blocks.
“I’m proud to say that I’m a master in my role, that I play for the team,” Onyenso said. “I’m glad that I’m doing it well. We’ve won games because of that, and I feel like we’re going to make a run in the NCAA Tournament because of that.”
The Month Of Guards
One thing has always held true in March: guards win you games. The last time Duke and Virginia played two weeks ago, the guard trio of Malik Thomas, Sam Lewis, and Jacari White combined to shoot 1-21 from the field and scored just 7 total points. On Saturday night under the bright lights of the Spectrum Center, it was the play of the guards that put the Hoos in a position to win.
Thomas scored a team-high 18 points and Lewis finished with 17 points to combine for half of Virginia’s points on the night. White added 6 points.
“Sam, Malik, Jacari, they’re deadly shooters and we were able to find them for some shots,” Hall said. “They were really aggressive in taking those shots and hit some big ones for us.”
Lewis earned first team All-ACC Tournament team honors along with Ugonna Onyenso, while Thomas and Thijs De Ridder were named to the second team. Both Lewis and Thomas are currently enjoying some of their best scoring stretches of the season with Lewis averaging 15 points per game over his last four games and Thomas averaging 15.2 points since the last game against Duke.
Lewis’ recent play is especially encouraging after suffering a 1-11 stretch between the first Duke game and a home win over Wake Forest. At times, the 6’7” wing looked like he lost his confidence, but Odom commended his teammates for picking him up during that slump.
“You’re going to have to weather storms, and certainly Sam had the maturity and the support he needed to get himself out of that,” Odom said.
One of the more precarious decisions against Duke was the lack of White, who only played 2 minutes in the second half after scoring 6 points in 8 minutes during the first half. Duke’s size on the perimeter likely could have contributed to White’s minimal role in the second half.
One of the biggest points of emphasis this week in Charlotte that players constantly referenced was getting more paint touches. In the first matchup against Duke, Virginia settled for 35 3-point attempts. This time around, especially with ACC Defensive Player of the Year Maliq Brown playing a minimal role, the UVA guards attacked the rim more consistently. UVA finished with 32 paint points compared to Duke’s 34, another vast improvement on the 16 paint points the Cavaliers mustered in Durham.
Hall says the Virginia guards made great strides in attacking the paint this week in Charlotte, but better decision making will be key the rest of March.
“This game was a lot better than last time we played them,” Hall said. “I think some of our decisions once we get there could be a little better, but it was good progress. You see the results, we’re a lot harder to guard when we’re doing that.”
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