No. 22 Virginia (21-7, 13-5) at Miami (14-14, 6-12)

9 p.m., ACCN

Virginia wraps up the road portion of its schedule tonight when the Wahoos travel to Coral Gables. The Hurricanes are the last ACC team that they have yet to play and come in battling to avoid the first day of the ACC Tournament next week in Greensboro.

The Cavaliers and Canes met just once last year, with UVa winning 56-46 at JPJ.

While their record may not be impressive, they are playing better basketball down the stretch than several weeks ago. After opening ACC play 2-7 and eventually 3-10, Miami won three straight before dropping its two most recent games.

A pair of head-to-head wins over Virginia Tech could be a deciding factor in ACC Tournament seeding, as the Hurricanes look to close out the season strong with home games against UVa and Syracuse.

Miami enters tonight’s contest ranked 106th in KenPom, 13th out of the 15 ACC teams. The Hurricanes are not elite on either end of the floor but their offense is significantly ahead of their defense. They rank 66th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency and play at a relatively slow pace. They do a decent job taking care of the basketball, ranking 60th nationally in turnover rate. However, most of Miami’s turnovers are of the live-ball variety (steals) and can often lead to points in transition for opponents.

Miami also does a great job at the free-throw line, making 75.5 percent of its attempts from the charity stripe. The Canes are not an excellent 3-point shooting team by any stretch, making just 32.1 percent of their attempts this year. But they also don’t live and die by the 3, getting just 28.4 percent of their points from triples.

On defense, Miami ranks 176th nationally in efficiency. And while the offense plays slow, opponents often seem to run the floor and try to score quickly against them. Usually there isn’t a massive delta between a team’s pace with the ball and their opponent’s pace. For example, UVa’s average offensive possession is 353rd nationally, or dead last, while its opponents play just slightly quicker, 351st in pace when they have the ball. Miami, meanwhile, ranks 232nd in Division I, while its opponents play on the break, ranking 33rd in possession pace.

Miami isn’t a very big team, and as a result, struggles on the glass at times, allowing quite a few offensive rebounds. The Hurricanes also don’t force many turnovers and allow opponents to shoot a very respectable 34.6 percent from 3.

The spotlight matchup in tonight’s game will be the head-to-head battle between the ACC’s top diminutive point guards, Kihei Clark and Chris Lykes. The pair had a good go last year at JPJ, with Lykes scoring a game-high 16 points and Clark scoring nine and dishing out six assists while Ty Jerome sat out with an injury.

This year, Lykes is once again Miami’s top weapon on the offensive end. Despite his stature at 5-foot-7, he has the ability to carve up defenses with his speed and skill, averaging 15.2 points per game. Lykes is also a good 3-point shooter, making 37.9 percent of his tries from beyond the arc. The matchup between these two small-but-quick guards should be worth the price of admission tonight.

Outside of Lykes, Miami mostly relies on guards to provide scoring. Dejan Vasiljevic is the team’s second-leading scorer averaging 13.2 points per game and is another player capable of getting hot from 3. Oklahoma transfer Kameron McGusty is another player to watch on the wing. He is averaging 13 points per game in his first season with the Hurricanes, and has four 20-point scoring efforts this season. Freshman guard Isaiah Wong has shown quite a bit of promise this season too and had a 27-point, 12-rebound effort in a win over Virginia Tech late last month.

In the frontcourt, Miami leans on two players to put up significant minutes. Center Rodney Miller is the top post scoring option, averaging 7.6 points per game in just under 25 minutes per contest. He hasn’t had a bunch of breakout games but did post a 13-point, 13-rebound effort against Duke earlier this year. Forward Sam Waardenburg, meanwhile, plays 28 minutes per game and is the team’s top rebounder with 5.9 boards per contest.

Virginia enters this game a slight favorite but remains red hot. The Hoos have won six in a row and nine of their last 10 as they look to finish strong with two regular-season games remaining.

As always, the Cavaliers will probably be living on the edge in the second half in what figures to be the next in a line of one close game after another. Miami is playing a bit better down the stretch and is 4-4 at home in ACC play while going just 2-8 on the road and needing OT in both of those wins away from South Florida.

And while the Canes have won a few conference games lately, they haven’t really come against top competition. They are 0-6 against the other top-three teams in the league, with an average margin of defeat of 18.8 points per game. Their six ACC wins have come against Pitt, BC, Clemson, Wake, and Virginia Tech twice.

A win over Virginia would be only Miami’s second this season against a top-50 KenPom team, with a two-point victory over Illinois in early December the other.

And while we aren’t picking UVa to blow out the Hurricanes like Louisville, FSU, and Duke did in almost all of their meetings, we feel comfortable picking UVa to win another close one against a team they should be able to knock off away from home.