The Cavaliers struggled with Stony Brook, with some of the points made by StLouHoo in his preview being the reasons why.  StLou told us that they had some good rim protecting bigs and they would shoot the three, and we saw Mouhamadou Gueye use his 6-9 height and long arms to shut down the Cavalier inside game for stretches of this contest, forcing the Hoos to look for other answers. StLou’s three keys for the Hoos were:

1) Get after their guards.

2) Continue to warm up from 3.

3) Get out to a quick start.

So how did the Hoos do and how did these keys figure in the actual outcome?

1) Get after their guards.

Stony Brook committed 17 turnovers, 11 of them in the first half, but only 2 were from a ballhandler guard. I use that odd term because Elijah Olaniyi is a small forward who started at guard and he committed 6 turnovers, and Andrew Garcia is a 6-5 forward who plays a lot of power forward but also on the perimeter and he committed 4. Kihei Clark and company did frequently pick up full court, but it did not really bother the Seawolves that much (wtf is a seawolf supposed to be?). However, the Cavaliers perimeter defenders did harass Stony Brook’s guards into a 10-33 shooting night with a measly 5 assists. So if we count Olaniyi as a guard, the Hoos did a good job of getting after the guards, and the poor shooting and turnovers were a major factor in the win, given that the offense was pathetic again.

Grade: A-

2) Continue to warm up from 3.

The Cavaliers hit a sizzling 31.4% of their threes last night, 5-16. It made a difference, particularly Tomas Woldetensae’s two late threes that helped the Hoos break away. Woldo appears to be finding his stroke, as he is now 5-7 in his last two games. Kihei was also 2-4, doing his damage in the first half. This marks the second consecutive game that the Cavaliers have raised their team 3FG% average. Now if we can just get Casey Morsell to stop shooting threes and Kody Stattmann to dial it down a little (he’s real good on those corner threes and off the drive-and-dish, but not so good otherwise), we might actually have a respectable team shooting percentage.

Grade: B

3) Get out to a quick start.

Four minutes into the game, it was 11-2 Hoos.  ELEVEN POINTS! IN FOUR MINUTES! Keep that up and the Hoos could have scored 110 points.  WOW! Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. Virginia did get out to a 14-2 lead, and if you are keeping track at home, that means that the powerful Stony Brook Seawolves of the mighty America East Conference battled the Cavaliers to a draw the rest of the way. Without the big start, this game could have ended differently, as with as little as five minutes left in the game it was very much in doubt who was going to walk off the floor with the win.

Grade: A-