Bulls charge past Cavaliers

TAMPA, Fla. — Tony Bennett pursed his lips, leaned back in his court-side seat and let out a big sigh.
There were still over three minutes to play in the game.
There he was, in a half-empty arena with ugly green and yellow seats. His best player had been outplayed by a guy many college fans don’t know. His second-best had fouled out way before then, with some nine minutes to play.
No, this wasn’t how the first-year coach envisioned his first road game going.
South Florida, behind 22 points and seven rebounds from junior guard Dominique Jones, and 18 points and eight rebounds from Augustus Gilchrist, avenged their loss to Virginia last season in Charlottesville with a 66-49 victory in front of a crowd of 4,193 at The Sun Dome.
“I think our defense held us in there,” Bennett said, “but then as the game wore on, I thought their defense toughened up and we kind of did a role reversal, and ours softened a little bit.”
The defeat was Virginia’s 11th consecutive in the state of Florida.
UVa (1-1) was led by Sylven Landesberg’s 14 points. But last year’s ACC rookie of the year was just 5 of 14 from the field with only two rebounds and two assists.
Jones, who was matched up with Landesberg for much of the game, had seven rebounds and four assists to go along with his game-high 22 points.
“He’s a big guard. I remember him from last year — he was just as good,” Landesberg said. “We were the aggressors on the defensive end in the first half, but in the second half they came out harder than we did, and it just carried on throughout the rest of the game.
“Gilchrist and Jones definitely got off.”
Meanwhile, Mike Scott, Virginia’s only low-post threat was in foul trouble for much of the game before eventually fouling out just past the midway mark of the second half.
“Mike’s our best interior scorer and when he’s not in the game, we’re pretty much a perimeter-oriented team,” Bennett said. “And when the shots aren’t falling, that makes it hard.
“They obviously capitalized on that. That affected us. I wish we could have had him for longer because we certainly need that. We’re thin in the front line. That didn’t help us at all.”
After the season-opening win against Longwood on Friday, Bennett said that he liked the way his team had played for the first 20 minutes or so. The goal, he said, was to increase that stretch of good play as the season progressed.
Virginia started the game well. On its very first offensive possession, Sammy Zeglinski and Scott connected on a fastbreak alley-oop.
A few minutes later, Mustapha Farrakhan executed an ankle-breaking cross-over and finished off a drive for a
3-point play.
UVa, more importantly, was bringing the effort on the defensive end. USF struggled to get inside the paint. On one sequence, Zeglinski blocked a shot, which resulted in a shot-clock violation.
“I thought they fought hard. The first 15 minutes defensively — they battled,” Bennett said. “They made it hard and it kept us in there.
UVa led by as many as six before things started to head south.
USF took a 21-19 lead on a Jones’ 3-pointer. The Bulls (2-0) then got hot from the outside en route to taking a 31-27 lead at the break.
Almost immediately after the intermission, things began to disintegrate for Virginia as USF — which shot 53 percent from the field for the game — opened the second half on a 9-0 run. UVa had as many turnovers in the first three minutes (two) as it had committed in the entire first half.
“When it unraveled, it
unraveled quick,” Bennett said. “Our defense slid a little bit, some of the decision-making went and then it was hard for us — then we were just playing catch up.”
Dunks
Senior Calvin Baker, who didn’t play in the season-opener against Longwood because he was still recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his knee, made his debut. He scored five points in 15 minutes.