If you’re like me, then you’re probably wondering: where the heck did Will Sherrill come from?

On Virginia coach Tony Bennett’s teleconference today, I asked him this question. In case you missed it, Sherrill had 18 points, 6 rebounds, 3 steals, 2 assists and 1 blocked shot in 24 minutes – all career highs. His previous highs were 3 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal, 1 block and 16 minutes. Interestingly, most of his answer had nothing to do with Sherrill’s shooting, which was lights out: 7-9 shooting, including 4-5 from three.

“Certainly in the fall, he shot the ball well, and he’s got a quick release and is a capable shooter. But why Will was getting time when he came into the game was, you watch him in practice or in games get his hands on a lot of offensive rebounds, he’s really help-conscious defensively,” Bennett said. “He makes up for his maybe lack of quickness or strength with his smarts. He moves the ball, makes the extra pass. He screens well, he stretches the defense with his shot. So he was doing a lot of the hustle things and the little things, that don’t always show up in the stat sheet, to warrant that time. And then, obviously he’s such a threat, he got going, and our guys did a great job of finding him.”

In addition to discussing Sherrill, Bennett discussed the other highs of the trip to Cancun. One positive, he said, was the performance of Sylven Landesberg against Cleveland State – “I thought he just had a complete game and helped his teammates,’” Bennett said. Landesberg’s line: 20 points on 6-13 shooting and 7-9 free throws, 5 assists, 5 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 turnover. The biggest high Bennett mentioned, however was his team’s resiliency in mounting a 10-point second-half comeback against Cleveland State.

“We fought and we scrapped,” Bennett said. “Certainly, you need guys to make shots, but we battled back, and for the most part kept our composure. We caught a nice break with Sammy [Zeglinski] hitting that [prayer] shot that we drew up and we’ve been working on (laughter). But I thought that they fought, and I thought that they needed to do that.”

And, the low point? It’s fairly obvious after watching Stanford’s Landry Fields to break down the Hoos for 25 points and surrendering 20 points off of turnovers one night, and allowing Cleveland State to shoot 55.3 percent from the field the next: defensive breakdowns and turnovers.

“That Stanford game, when we needed to get some stops, we had some breakdowns at the wrong times, and some turnovers that cost us baskets,” Bennett said. “Those are the things you talk about trying to eliminate to give us a chance in games like that.”

More notes: Mustapha Farrakhan started over Jeff Jones against Cleveland State, Bennett said, because “we felt [Farrakhan] was our best match-up for their kid [Norris Cole] who was very quick and used a lot of the ball-screens” … Bennett noted that he has gone to an 8-9 man rotation, but added, “that doesn’t mean it’s locked in there, doesn’t mean those guys are the ones,” mentioning Sherrill as an example of someone new cracking the rotation on a given night … Assane Sene “is still finding himself a little bit, finding his legs,” as he acclimates himself to game minutes following his three-game suspension to start the season, Bennett said. After an efficient night of 8 points, 5 rebounds, and one block in 13 minutes against Oral Roberts, he totaled two points, 3 rebounds and no blocks in 19 minutes in Cancun.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 27th, 2009 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Men's Basketball, Tony Bennett, UVa Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.