Although Steve Yanda of the Post says that it wasn't an ideal performance, the fact is that a young Virginia team went on the road, got down by 12, came back and won by eight. And while Minnesota was missing two starters, Virginia lost Will Sherrill, one of the few upperclassmen they have, to a leg injury.
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Tony Bennett apparently got mad at the team's transition defense and threatened to bench everyone: problem solved!
On the bright side, though, UVa was 10-13 from three point range and actually outrebounded a much bigger team, 36-31. All in all, it was a really impressive performance.
On Tuesday, FSU hosts Ohio State, Georgia Tech heads up to Chicago to face Northwestern, Wake welcomes Iowa, and UNC visits Illinois.
The rage that Ol' Roy Williams sometimes aims at himself he aimed at his team Sunday, telling his assistants that "I felt like murdering somebody. I'm getting fired up and I look out there and I've got 16 guys looking at me like it's a Sunday afternoon picnic."
Well, it was Sunday...He also says he'd like John Henson to be "more of a threat" in the paint. He'll probably need to be against Illinois.
Of course they're also going to need a lot out of Harrison Barnes. So the question now is: is it fair to ask so much so soon? To which the logical answer is: huh? Barnes has been an active participant in his own hype machine for a long time. If Ol' Roy and company are freaking out over the attention he's getting, they should remember that he's been stoking the fires for a long time now. And as Luke DeCock points out, "...Williams has complained about that...[but] he did as much to encourage it as anyone with his 'Harrison is more focused than Tyler' comparisons with Tyler Hansbrough as a freshman before the season."
If you want the star making machinery you have to take the good with the bad.
Barnes has been built up (with his full participation) as a sort of combination of Kobe Bryant and Shane Battier. Maybe hungry and humble was a better approach.
We do object to this to an extent: "Much less is being asked of Irving, though, than of Barnes. Without Irving, Duke would still have the core of a national title team. With him, the Blue Devils are in prime position to win another."
Well, true in one sense. But in another, not at all. Irving was given the ball, told he's the point guard, and has been compared to Chris Paul and John Wall. He's expected to be the final piece -- indeed the critical piece -- on a potentially excellent team. The difference is that no one from his camp is suggesting that all of the attention is unfair and he's holding his end up. True he has a better cast, but pound for pound and round for round if you will, Irving has to date outperformed Barnes fairly significantly:
| Player | GP | MIN | PPG | RPG | APG | SPG | BPG | TPG | FG% | FT% | 3P% |
| Kyrie Irving | 6 | 26.8 | 14.5 | 3.7 | 5.8 | 1.5 | 0.5 | 2.3 | .491 | .923 | .409 |
| Harrison Barnes | 6 | 28.3 | 11.8 | 6.3 | 2.2 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 2.0 | .352 | .778 | .333 |
Minutes are almost equal, and Irving matches or exceeds Barnes in everything except rebounding and blocks, but those are big man things. And obviously some depend on your teammates and your opportunities. For instance, when you shoot, if the defense is collapsing on you it's harder to score. But some categories are about the individual. Rebounding, for instance, blocked shots, steals to an extent, and certainly foul shooting. And it's hard to quantify defense. We haven't watched Barnes closely, but Irving's defense, to date, has been superb. At this point, he's not only matched the hype, he's exceeded it. Not a bad accomplishment.
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