CARDINALS

What makes Virginia's defense so tough?

Jeff Greer
Louisville Courier Journal
Louisville coach Rick Pitino works the court during a game against Pitt on Sunday in Pittsburgh.

Louisville meets Virginia at 7 p.m. Saturday for what should one of the games of the season in college basketball. It's the first of two matchups between the ACC powers, and it'll have a big impact on the race for the regular-season conference crown.

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Considering the teams haven't played in 24 years, and certainly not since Tony Bennett turned UVA into a powerhouse, let's go through an important explanation of how Virginia's defense works. If you can appreciate how good Louisville and Kentucky's defenses are here in this state, then you'll appreciate how good Virginia's is, too.

The stats

Before we explain why UVA's defense is so good, a few eye-popping stats: Virginia is 20-1. It ranks second in the nation in defensive efficiency, second in effective field-goal defense, fifth in defensive rebounding, third in 2-point field-goal defense and 30th in block percentage.

I spent a significant part of my Thursday morning looking for flaws in Virginia's statistical profile, and I didn't come up with all that much, if anything, really. They don't go to the foul line much, but they don't foul, either. They don't use their bench a ton, but they don't need to because they play the second-slowest tempo in college basketball.

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And here are two more staggering statistics: Virginia has played 21 games and only allowed more than four(!) fast-break points in a game once -- against Duke, which had 14. UVA, on average, allows 2.2 fast-break points per game, and kept UNC, one of the top up-tempo teams in the nation, to two fast-break points.

Equally as impressive: Duke is the only team to score more 34 points in the paint against Virginia, with 44, which more than doubled UVA's opponents' average of just 21 points in the paint per game.

That's ridiculous, especially considering that UVA has played the second-, fourth-, seventh-, 12th-, 29th- and 50th-most efficient offenses in the country. That's six of the nation's top-50 offenses, and Virginia stifled all of them except Duke, which shot 50.9 percent from the field and still only scored 69 points.

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How does the Virginia defense work?

Well, it's very different than Louisville's style of defense. So, let's go to the tape, with a major assist from my friend Rob Dauster over at NBC Sports. He has the full explainer from last month, and he goes into great detail on how UVA does so well on defense:

"Conceptually, it's pretty simple," Dauster writes. "Encourage dribble penetration into help, takeaway post touches, force contested jumpers over the top of the defense and clean up the defensive glass.

"There are two core principles to the Pack-Line: The player guarding the man with the ball is to provide intense ball-pressure well beyond the three-point line while the other four help defenders are to all be within an imaginary, 16-foot arc."

Read Rob's full UVA pack-line defense film session here.