While the Virginia Cavaliers were thoroughly dominating the Hokies on Wednesday, Syracuse was struggling to knock off NC State in overtime. In the road game against a struggling NC State team, the Orange scored 1.35 points per possession to the Wolfpack’s 1.26, for a final score of 100-93 in 74 possessions. Whether by Virginia’s standards or not, basically nobody played any defense in that game.
That isn’t going to be the case in the matchup this weekend. If Syracuse doesn’t want to play defense, that would be fine. But Tony Bennett’s defenses do not take games off.