Virginia’s Kyle Guy (5) laughs as he gathers with teammates Ty Jerome (11), Jay Huff (30) and De’Andre Hunter (12) during practice Friday in Minneapolis for Saturday night’s Final Four game against Auburn. The Cavaliers are built on a methodical approach to offense and defense.
Auburn’s Bryce Brown drives to the basket during practice Friday in Minneapolis. Brown is the program’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made, with 378, and a big part of the Tigers’ speedy style of play.MINNEAPOLIS – Virginia and Auburn will meet Saturday in the Final Four, a matchup expected to provide the latest installment of a long-running competition of styles in men’s basketball: slow and steady versus fast and furious.
The Cavaliers are rarely in a hurry, playing in a fashion as deliberate and methodical as the Supreme Court.
The Tigers take a frenetic approach – something more akin to Judge Judy.
Virginia (33-3), a No. 1 seed and the NCAA tournament’s South Region champion, and Auburn (30-9), a No. 5 seed and the Midwest winner, face off in the day’s first national semifinal at U.S. Bank Stadium, with tipoff set for 6:09 p.m. EDT. The second semifinal is No. 2 seed Michigan State (32-6) of the East against No. 3 seed Texas Tech (30-6) of the West, with the winners meeting in the title game Monday night. CBS will televise all three games.
Whether Auburn or Virginia advances is likely to be decided by which team dictates the pace of play in the programs’ first meeting since December 2004 and just their third overall.
“We’re not going to compromise on how we play,” Virginia guard Kyle Guy said, “but at the same time, our style of play is just to win.”
Uncompromising is a good way to describe Cavaliers coach Tony Bennett’s philosophy, which was passed down by his father, former longtime college coach Dick Bennett. Virginia’s pack line defense and milk-the-clock offense can lead to ugly games. Last year when Virginia became the first No. 1 seed ever to lose an NCAA tournament game to a No. 16 seed, critics of that style were quick to pounce.
The Cavaliers owned the upset and came back stronger this season, better than ever offensively under Bennett but steadfast in their approach. Based on metrics developed by basketball analyst Ken Pomeroy that measure pace of play, Virginia is among the slowest Division I teams.
While facing Virginia is a test of patience, Auburn wants to make the opposition feel rushed.
“To be honest, I feel like we just have to keep playing the way we’ve been playing, pushing the ball in transition,” Tigers guard Bryce Brown said. “We may have to make more 3s than usual.”
The Tigers rank 69th in the country in average length of offensive possession at 16.9 seconds, according to stats at KenPom.com. Coach Bruce Pearl’s team will take some chances defensively, which could lead to a forced turnover or a quick basket, but either way the Tigers keep things moving.
“We turn people over almost 25 percent of the possessions. They don’t turn the ball but nine times in a game,” Pearl said of the Cavaliers, “and the more you try to turn them over, the better you make their offense.”
As much as Virginia has become synonymous with stifling defense under Bennett, the Cavaliers will enter this game as the third-most efficient offense in the country based on points per possession.
“I think we have not only more people that can score, but more people that can shoot the ball,” said Guy, who snapped out of a postseason shooting slump by going 5-for-12 from 3-point range in an Elite Eight overtime thriller against Purdue.
Only Savannah State shot more 3-pointers this season than Auburn. The Tigers have hoisted 1,083 attempts from long range, making 37.9 percent. Star guards Brown and Harper are the leaders in that department, with Brown the program’s career leader in 3s made with 378.
“We just have to get to the shooters,” said Virginia’s De’Andre Hunter, a third-team All-American. “We have to get to them quick, possibly run them off their line and make them make plays.”
Auburn has already started to make one major adjustment.
The Tigers lost star forward Chuma Okeke to a season-ending injury in their Sweet 16 victory against North Carolina. The sophomore ranks as the team’s third-leading scorer and top rebounder for the season, but he had surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left knee earlier this week and is not expected to be in Minneapolis.
Without Okeke, Danjel Purifoy took on a bigger role this past Sunday as Auburn beat Kentucky in overtime to reach the Final Four for the first time. The junior played a season-high 32 minutes against the Wildcats and scored six points with seven rebounds. Anfernee McLemore, another junior, played a season-high 30 minutes against Kentucky, scoring eight points with five rebounds.
“It took a little adjustment at first,” Brown said, “but I just feel like a lot of people stepped up in that moment.”