Every now and then as the Wahoos are playing and it’s not going that well, a friend of mine will text that the game has gotten hard to watch. And I joked the other morning that I wasn’t sure how the matchup with Gonzaga would go but hopefully it wouldn’t reach that level.

Well, needless to say, Saturday afternoon was pretty hard to watch.

In its 98-75 loss to the top-ranked Bulldogs, the Cavaliers put more pressure on themselves than they did on their opponents. As their mistakes mounted and their defense failed to arrive, they were rarely ever within striking distance. The Zags not only scored more points than any UVa opponent in more than a decade but they benefited from 15 Virginia turnovers, including three in as many possessions to start the game.

It was for hard for Wahoo fans to watch as Corey Kispert hit nine 9s on the way to 32 points, which tied the school record. It was difficult to watch UVa allow 60-percent shooting from the floor. And it was hard to watch the Zags score 27 points off miscues.

“When you give ‘em so many points off turnovers,” Tony Bennett said after, “that puts you in a big hole.”

Of all the games where UVa could’ve really used an efficient, even-keeled kind of outing devoid of a big hole? This would have been the one.

“They really exposed some things that we have to go to work on and just try to sure up,” Bennett said. “That was discouraging for sure. Start with ball security on the offensive end and then you play from there. They hurt us in the areas we’ve tried to work hard on: Transition defense, making them shoot contested shots, and taking care of the ball. Start with that. We couldn’t even get to that spot and execute at a high level.”

At 4-2 overall with ACC play set to begin this week, this baptism-via-flamethrower was frustrating in a variety of ways for Virginia fans and players and coaches alike, not the least of which is how rough the Cavaliers looked against their first challenger of a high-major caliber.

Kispert went nuclear on 11-for-15 shooting, including the aforementioned 3s. Drew Timme added 29 points on 9-for-15 shooting including an 11-for-13 day at the stripe. The Hoos, led by 19 points from Kihei Clark and 15 from Trey Murphy III, simply couldn’t keep up. That’s what happens when you turn it over too much to score enough points and subsequently can’t get stops either.

“A lot of breakdowns,” Bennett said. “We had a lot of trouble on ball screen defense…They had us every time. That was hard. Every time we got a little momentum, it was either a turnover or they just got an easy bucket.”

It should be said that part of what made this difficult to watch was the mismatch itself. Gonzaga is deep and talented and hitting on all cylinders. UVa is deep but confused and still searching for its identity.

And a team without one of those isn’t going to take out the Zags. Not this year. No way.

But really, the result had as much to do with UVa as it did anything else, as the Wahoos were given a “reality check” in Fort Worth, as Bennett said.

“This was important but painful and I wish it wasn’t as poor a showing as it was,” he added. “Sometimes you have to be able to know ‘Who are we? Where are we really at?’ And, again, I know Gonzaga is great but we made them look even better than great tonight and that was discouraging.”

That’s actually a great question: Who are these Wahoos? They have yet to play defense anywhere close the level UVa typically does and they certainly aren’t comfortable on the floor with each other yet, either. That could be in part due to the 10 day COVID-19-induced pause…but they weren’t exactly killing it before then.

“It was a bit overwhelming for some,” Bennett said of the matchup, adding later “We couldn’t get a handle on things.” He also said that Gonzaga “had us pretty much most possessions” and that UVa “didn’t have a place in that game today. We didn’t. We couldn’t stop them for consecutive times and make them earn.”

The lack of consistent games against good competition might play a role…but then again UVa lost to San Francisco and barely got out of overtime with a win over Kent State.

Asked if in hindsight he should’ve said yes to playing this game against the No. 1 team in the country, Bennett was unequivocal.

“I have regrets of how poorly we played and getting beat this much,” he said. “But absolutely not. We needed this…We needed to play against some teams that are high-major caliber. This is the first time and we weren’t ready for it. It was too much. But I think you have to. You can’t hide forever. You’ve got to know ‘Look, we’ve got some warts and we’ve got to go to work on those’.”

A year ago, UVa started slow and rounded into form thanks to a defensive output that was not only impressive but absolutely necessary thanks to a lack of offensive firepower. This team doesn’t have the former and, despite being exceptionally more talented in this respect, is still struggling with the latter too.

“Defense,” Bennett said, “is so much about your heart and your mind…You have to decide as a collective group, ‘We’re going to fight, die trying so to speak, on possessions. It’s going to matter that much.’

“When you can’t get stops, it puts too much pressure on you,” he added.

So, where do things go from here? Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest are on the schedule over the next week and change. They might not be Gonzaga but they’re not Saint Francis, either. So how do the Hoos turn the page to something that consistently resembles UVa basketball again?

“Now we go to work,” Bennett said during his media availability, echoing the hopes of a lot of fans in Charlottesville and beyond.

That work seems more substantial now than when this season tipped off a month ago.

For most fans, it’s been hard to watch.