CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.– Kihei Clark netted a season-high 20 points to become Virginia’s career victories leader as a player with win No. 111 as the No. 10 Cavaliers handed Virginia Tech the 78-68 loss on Wednesday night.
Armaan Franklin added 15 points and Jayden Gardner 12 for the ‘Hoos.
UVA head coach Tony Bennett met with the media after the game to discuss the game.
On the guard pay against the Hokies
There were a couple of good guards in attendance tonight, so I think they wanted to play well.. but they sure did. Virginia Tech is really good. They’re healthy or healthier now and when they have Hunter [Cattoor] back, and he’s such a good player, and then they put a lot of pressure on you. Rarely will you hear me say this, but we had to score. We had a hard time stopping them and we ran good offense, and the guards made timely, big baskets, but they put a lot of pressure on you. And I just thought there was some key plays. I do think Ryan Dunn was very… he was influential – there was a difference defensively for us with his length, so he impacted that game that way but I think all all the guys that were in there did a good job. It was just a really good game for us, and I think for them to win there was a lot of runs but the guards certainly played well.
How impactful was ball security today? Only five turnovers?
It’s important. Possessions matter in games like this, and both of us try to do some similar thing – we try to really jam up the lane, make it hard, we’re not out there denying and pressuring passing lanes, but there’s a lot of traffic. If you put it on the floor and then there’s the obviously some individual quick hands.. and again in games like this against high quality opponent, you can forget their conference record that’s not even right because of what they were before having Hunter hurt… Whether you can knock down your free throws, get some key rebounds, and then handle the ball , all that stuff matters. They only had eight turnovers, both had 19 assists, so it was a fairly clean offensive game by both teams.
