After picking up three personal fouls in a little over two minutes, Virginia center Travis Watson was forced to take a seat on the bench with his team only up four against N.C. State and 14:06 remaining in the game.
Instead of taking the conservative approach and keeping Watson on the pine with four fouls, Coach Pete Gillen reinserted the baby-faced behemoth at the 9:42 mark in this crucial ACC battle.
The Brookneal, Va., native played with reckless abandon, stepping up at that critical juncture. Watson tallied a career-high 20 points with 10-for-15 shooting, 12 rebounds, and perhaps most importantly for the Cavalier faithful, zero fouls in the last 10 minutes, leading the Cavs to an 88-82 victory over the Wolfpack.
Gillen breaks the coaches' mold with his propensity to call early timeouts and bring in players with foul trouble before the standard five-minutes remaining mark. Saturday night, his gamble paid off. Watson was instrumental down the stretch by scoring eight points, leading the Cavalier charge.
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"They couldn't guard him," Gillen said. "They were hitting him with bricks, and they brought everything they could, and they couldn't stop him. It was hand-to-hand combat."
Virginia's inside game has come under fire during the offensive woes of the Cavs' three-game losing streak. Much of the criticism was directed at Watson, who, through no fault of his own, plays out of position. Although he was recruited as a power forward, Watson has been thrust into the center position out of necessity. He is doing a yeoman's job despite being plagued by an injured ankle.
He cannot be blamed for the fact that Virginia does not have a pure center to pair-up with him down low. Despite this seven-foot hole in the Cav's lineup, Watson battles courageously to secure a berth in the NCAA Tournament for Virginia.
"It's really not about myself," Watson said. "It's what I need to do for the team to be successful."
Watson's recent lackluster performances suggested the first year might be wearing down. The 6-foot-7, 251-pounder nightly gives up several inches to the Baxters, Colliers and Haywoods of the ACC. In his previous three games, Watson tallied a combined 16 points, including an abysmal two-point effort against Georgia Tech, where he was bullied by the Yellow Jacket twin towers, James Collier and Alvin Jones.
"The first year guys don't usually face the pressure that he's under," Gillen said. "He's a power forward playing at center for us, and he gets beat up. At some point, all freshmen hit the wall mentally, emotionally, physically, psychologically because of the pressure and how tough it is to play in the ACC."
Watson burst through that proverbial wall Saturday night in what may have been the Cavaliers' biggest game of the season. A loss would have sent the Cavs spiraling, but their win placed them back in the thick of the ACC runner-up race. The man affectionately nicknamed "Bubba" ensured that the Wolfpack did not earn its first ACC road win of the season by battling inside and abusing defenders on the offensive end.
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