Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403130136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: jack bogaczyk
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
In playing defense, the Cavaliers told the sellout crowd at the Charlotte Coliseum that this game had the potential for becoming an edge-of-the-seater.
Virginia started the game playing a zone. That's like four of the top five and six of the top eight teams in the Associated Press Top 25 losing within five hours. It's like a coach winning his 800th game, but needing overtime to do it.
You don't see it very often.
UVa, respected and reviled for its man-to-man in which some foes insist five players are fouling on every play, was starting the game in a half-court 2-3 alignment.
When was the last time that happened?
"I can't remember," said Jeff Jones, the Cavaliers' coach.
"I don't know, maybe one game earlier this year," said assistant coach Dennis Wolff.
It took a defensive specialist - a senior Dick Vitale calls "the best all-around defensive player in the country" - to come up with the answer.
"That's easy," Cornel Parker said. "The second game against North Carolina [Feb. 21] last season."
So began Virginia's sixth trip to the ACC championship game in the 41-year history of this tournament. This was Mission: Improbable. The incongruity in the Cavaliers' 66-61 triumph stretched longer than the Duke head coach's surname.
Fourth-seeded Virginia was led by a pair of freshman guards for the second consecutive day. One of those, Jamal Robinson, was making only his second start of the season - in the past two days.
Robinson's whirling-dervish of a hoop with 52 seconds left didn't quite complete the deviling of the nation's fifth-ranked team. His backcourt classmate, Harold Deane, stuck the fork in the league's regular-season champion by hitting two free throws with 6.3 seconds to play.
After a first half in which 6-foot-1 Deane played in-your-face with 6-3 Duke guard Chris Collins at both ends of the floor, Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski switched All-America swingman Grant Hill onto Deane.
A 7-inch height difference seemed like a mountain for the Cavaliers' guard, who was 1-for-7 in the second half. The one - unpredictably, of course - was a 3-point bomb that brought the eighth lead change and gave UVa a 60-59 edge with 3 minutes, 40 seconds left.
Robinson finished with 19 points, a season high, 26 hours after a 16-point season best against Maryland. Of course, the New Yorker wouldn't have even been starting had center Yuri Barnes not been benched Friday after breaking a team rule.
If Robinson doesn't start, UVa (17-11) doesn't get to the final because it wouldn't have reached the semifinal to ruin Duke's hopes for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Virginia's 52.2 percent marksmanship in the first half followed its 60 percent second half against the Terrapins. That's only the second time this season - Jan. 6 and 9 against Florida State and North Carolina State was the first - that Jones' team had back-to-back halves in which it made more than half of its shots.
UVa didn't practice shooting earlier in the day. There was no room at the inn. The Cavaliers, swept by Duke in the regular season - including a 30-point rout in February on Tobacco Road - went to a ballroom at the Radisson Hotel and walked through their defensive plans.
They probably thought they had stumbled into the wrong team meeting.
"We didn't know until then we were going to start in a zone," Parker said. "Of course, what we had done down there [in Durham, N.C.] didn't work."
Although UVa switched defenses throughout the game, Jones said "the little bit of a zone was to try to keep them off-balance and turn Duke into a jump-shooting team and not let them be a slashing team.
"They're good jump-shooters, but we figured that was the lesser of two evils."
The Cavs also didn't know which lineup Duke would start - one with 6-10 Erik Meek alongside 6-11 Cherokee Parks, or the quicker one Krzyzewski used most of the season. The 2-3 was a hedge.
"We had a game plan," Jones said. "We just never had any idea it was going to work."
Parker's tough defense helped push Hill to a 6-for-20 shooting day. The Duke star also was worn out in the last five minutes when the Devils needed him most. That's why Deane got open for his 3-pointer.
The chalk on the board in the Virginia locker room said, "Be The Aggressor," and Parker takes those words literally.
So, when longtime referee Lenny Wirtz called Parker's third foul 20 feet from the hoop with 13:26 left, the Cavaliers' senior decided to smilingly defend himself as Wirtz handed the ball to Hill for the inbounds pass.
"I just told Lenny, `You can't protect the All-American all the time,' " Parker said. "It wasn't that big a deal. It was normal contact. It was a good play.
"Besides, I just wanted to mess with Lenny a little bit."
It was that kind of day. What Virginia tried, worked. In today's final against fourth-ranked North Carolina (26-6), who knows what zone the Cavaliers will play in.
One thing is certain. Jamal Robinson will start.
by CNB