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Virginia’s Ugly Win Over Rutgers Is Defensively Beautiful

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By @writered21

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It’s fair to say that for a final, Saturday’s Barclay’s Classic championship game between the eighth-ranked Virginia Cavaliers and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights was probably pretty awful television. Neither team shot well, and points were harder to come by than even in most college football games on the day. But if you are a Virginia fan, you can live with the somewhat impotent offense for one night when you consider the defensive effort the Cavaliers turned in.

Virginia moved to 7-0 on the season with a 45-26 win over Rutgers to win the tournament, after defeating the La Salle Explorers on Friday night. Virginia actually trailed at halftime, 18-17, then held the Scarlet Knights to a mere eight points over the final 20 minutes to pull away and win convincingly over a Rutgers team that had knocked off Vanderbilt in Friday’s other semifinal. Rutgers (3-3) shot just 25 percent from the field, missed all 13 of their three-point attempts and committed as many turnovers (12) as the number of field goals they made.

The Cavaliers weren’t much better on offense, and that perhaps is a story for another day, but how good does the offense need to be if Virginia is only going to concede 26 points? That kind of total is the likes of what you’ve seen Kentucky and Louisville, teams regarded as much bigger national powers. But for a Virginia team that had the nation’s best scoring defense a year ago, this game had to be an absolute beautiful feast for Cavaliers fans. One night after having to sit through another failure by the school’s sorry excuse for a football team, UVA fans could once again focus on relevant matters with the basketball team at center stage.

The defensive effort tonight was the epitome of Virginia basketball, with Rutgers often having to use 30 to 33 seconds of a shot clock only to fire up a contested outside jumper that bounced off the rim; that is, if the Scarlet Knights even got a shot up at all before committing a shot clock violation. Virginia is again No. 1 in the country in scoring defense, having allowed a somewhat insane 43.6 PPG so far in the seven wins. No opponent has broken 60 yet on the Cavaliers, with La Salle’s 56 points Friday night the closest any opponent has come.

Virginia won’t allow a mere 26 points to any ACC opponents this season, and with opponents like Maryland and VCU coming up, the scoring defense average is sure to go up soon, even if the Cavaliers emerge from these two games 9-0. But if anyone thought that losing Joe Harris and Akil Mitchell was going to hurt UVA’s trademark Pack Line defense, tonight helped make the case that those folks were sorely mistaken.

Ed Morgans is an ACC Basketball Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @writered21 and add him to your network on Google.

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