This game was never in doubt.
The outcome was decided before I put the finishing touches on my preview this morning and before Grambling State left Louisiana. It was probably over sometime around when our respective basketball staff members signed off on scheduling the game.
The score was 10–5 Virginia with 13:37 to go in the first half, and you could tell that the game was over then despite being a two possession game on the scoreboard because all four of our baskets were fun stuff — two threes, a Darius alley-oop to Devon and a Devon behind-the-back to Jack Salt on a fast break — and when we’re getting a lot of fun looks on fast breaks, a big lead is often not far behind. Sure enough, that five point lead ballooned into a 39–4 run that put us up 40 (!) at the break, with nine of our 10 active scholarship players contributing to our 49 points. The second half was an easy jog to the finish line.
Lots of fun things happened in this one.
- It was the first time in more than 70 years that we held three straight opponents under 40 points.
- Grambling State shot 23.1%, managed an efficiency mark of 0.48 points per possession, and turned it over on almost a third (30.1%) of possessions used. Our guys were too big, too fast, too strong, and too good, and there were too many of them.
- Kyle Guy scored 20 points on seven shots in 13 minutes and led Grambling State 20–14 by himself when he checked out for good with more than 10 minutes left. In a show of mercy by Tony Bennett, Guy played the least minutes tonight of any Virginia scholarship player.
- Marial Shayok broke double digits again, going for 12 in 14 minutes. He’s now scored at least 10 in three of our four games.
- Darius Thompson hit two more threes and scored 12 in 16 minutes. He’s now hit half of his 12 attempts from behind the arc to start the season, though I caution against getting too excited: he started last year 10–24 before New Year’s before cratering in conference games.
- Ty Jerome made his first and second collegiate threes and dished five assists in 23 minutes.
- Mamadi Diakite scored eight points (including a feathery baseline jumper)and blocked three shots (including another one without looking) in 16 minutes. My only thing with him is that he seems to prefer delicately laying the ball in — I will lose my shit the first time he follows up a teammate’s miss with a dunk.
- Devon Hall got a three to go down.
- London Perrantes or Isaiah Wilkins didn’t do much — again — because we didn’t need them to do much. London made a deep three and Isaiah had a sweet block.
- Jarred Reuter had five assists in his entire first year. He had four in this game.
- Justice Bartley led the parade of walk-ons into the game at the 12:13 mark of the second half and the entire Green Machine was in shortly after the 10 minute mark. ALL OF THEM SCORED! Bartley hit a three and threw down a dunk, Trevon Gross shamelessly took the most shots on the team (completely forgivable, he was on a mission) and made a rainbow three to finally crack the box score, and Jeff Jones executed the slowest juke move ever to get open and can a corner three.
- All 13 players to see the court scored, which is something I used to strive for to entertain myself in lopsided games of NBA2k. All 13 also played at least 10 minutes.
This is all great, but it comes with a grain of salt because tonight felt like someone set the difficulty level to rookie and moved all of the sliders to easy for Virginia while leaving them on difficult for Grambling State. Still, it was fun to enjoy a game with no nerves — that doesn’t happen very often — and shutting down the analytical part of my fanhood to celebrate fun plays on Twitter all night.
Iowa and the Emerald Coast Classic are up next.
