RALEIGH, N.C. – Sam Hauser and Trey Murphy III each scored 18 points and No. 14 Virginia produced a strong finishing stretch to beat North Carolina State 64-57. Jay Huff added 12 points for the Cavaliers, who had their 15-game ACC winning streak stretching to last season halted Saturday night at then-No. 20 Virginia Tech.
Jericole Hellems poured in 23 points before fouling out for N.C. State, which won just one game in January.
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Virginia endured an eight-minute span without a field goal in the second half but Huff and Hauser ignited the Cavaliers’ offense down the stretch.
“The message, I talked about trying not to yield. I thought we yielded a bit too much and at key times against Virginia Tech and I didn’t sense that tonight. Even in the first half, there was a couple possessions, but the stats that stood out to me, were we only allowed three offensive rebounds when we allowed eight in the first half,” said Virginia head coach Tony Bennett.
“That was a bit of resiliency. Trey (Murphy III) had a big offensive rebound and then we handled the ball because they started turning up the gas on the press, you could feel that. We have one takeaway, Casey (Morsell) threw one and they went and laid it in. A couple breakdowns, and then I thought we made it hard for them. We made some plays and got to the free throw line through drives and even the threes we missed for the most part were good shots. They showed some, the idea of not yielding. I kept saying that the timeout ‘don’t yield, don’t yield’ and I was glad to see that we hung tough and came away with a good road victory.”
“I think we learned from that game. We were kind of in the same position, up eight or nine points with about 10 minutes to go. They had their run and instead of folding and giving in we responded with our own run and that was the difference than the Blacksburg game,” said Cavaliers forward Sam Hauser.
“Definitely did a great job in that aspect in the second half.”