CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Kihei Clark scored 15 points as Virginia turned in a wire-to-wire win over Louisville, 64-52, rebounding from a double-digit loss to North Carolina State. Virginia continued a season-long trend. The Cavaliers have won back-to-back games once this season, knocking off Syracuse and Clemson, and have yet to lose back-to-back games.
“Well, especially early on it always helps when you’re making some shots but I thought we were crisp, found different things, moved well without the ball screen pretty well. We had, we call them pocket passes, Kihei [Clark] got us off to a good start,” said Virginia head coach Tony Bennett. “There was a nice synergy in terms of how they played and were connected in that way so that was good.”
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Reece Beekman proved to be an effective facilitator, collecting a career-high 11 assists which is also the most by any ACC player this season.
“The 25-8 deficit really put us behind the eight-ball. Virginia is a team that struggled to score all year, and after they got 25 points in the first eight or nine minutes, it was way more of a challenge for them to score after that point,” said Louisville head coach Chris Mack. “The three cutters that they run throughout the game on offense cut really hard, and you have to be more determined to win the chase battle, if you will. We only had a short time to prepare, just like Virginia did, but it’s one thing to tell them and it’s one thing to execute it and we executed it much better after we got in such a deficit.
Virginia now holds a three game winning streak against Louisville and has won 12 of the last 13 meetings.