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16 CAVALIER CORNER "I don't think at the time that he was really highly touted. And I just said, 'He's got it.'" It would be easy to say the rest is history, but Bennett — as he always does — had questions about defense. "Those two guys, can they defend? Can they get enough?" he remembers asking himself and his staff. "I thought they prob- ably could, but man, I knew they had the 'it' factor, no question. I really was impressed with what they brought to the table. "Fortunately, with the good Lord's blessing, we got to be there early enough and we saw enough to know they were what we wanted." During the course of their recruitments — Jerome picked UVA first and Guy reached out to him via social media just before he joined him in the 2016 class — the two had plenty of time to get acquainted. By the time they enrolled at UVA in summer 2016, they'd been friends for more than a year. But they had no idea how much they'd lean on each other. Rookie seasons can be tough even when you're not adjusting to the pack-line and a culture like Bennett has built at UVA. "For me," Guy explained, "I was excited and thought, 'I'm going to buy in right away,' but once we started practice, I was like, 'Man this stuff sucks.'" "Yeah, I remember like the first play, might've been an early workout in the summer because we were prac- ticing and preparing for Spain our first summer here, we were doing like a two-on-two close-out drill," Jerome added, "and someone just ripped past Kyle and dunked on him." "Marial [Shayok]," Guy chimed in. "Yeah, that's when Kyle knew, 'Man, I've really gotta play defense here,'" Jerome said. Defense and physicality was a reason they both saw up and down minutes throughout the 2016-17 sea- son. Each played in all 34 games, with Guy averaging 7.5 points, 1.7 boards and 1.3 assists per game while Je- rome put up 4.3 points, 1.6 rebounds and 1.5 assists per contest. "There were definitely times when one of us was playing more than the other, where Kyle and I were able to keep supporting each other," Jerome said. "There was never any jealousy or anything and that's what is so special about this team. "We're just confident dudes who go to work and we don't care who gets the shine." "Absolutely correct," Guy added. "There were stretches where we would not play much or one of us would play two minutes or whatever and that can be tough on you. I started playing more minutes earlier in the season, so I was trying to encourage him to stay positive and he was always the first to tell me to keep shooting and be aggressive. "And then there was a stretch where I didn't play that much and he started playing more and it was the same; I was just trying to be there for him." "I think the biggest thing I'd attribute that to is the way Coach Bennett recruits," Je- rome noted. "I think he does his homework and his research when he recruits and he doesn't go recruit any bad kids. He doesn't recruit any poisons to a team. "He recruits good kids, kids that will buy into his system. He's not going to recruit someone who he sees have a bad game and have a negative attitude. If they do, you know this isn't the right place for them." As thankful as Guy and Jerome were to have each other to lean on, as well as the other members of a standout 2016 recruit- ing class that was rated among the top 10 nationally, they also knew they had to im- prove. They came back bigger, stronger and — perhaps the real ray of sunshine — better defensively as second-years. They both started each of UVA's first 21 games this season, with Guy leading the team at 15.2 points per game and Jerome going for 11.6 points, 4.4 assists and 4.0 boards per contest in ACC play. Their improvement on the defensive end is a big reason why UVA boasts the best D in the nation through Jan. 29, limiting op- ponents to just 52.1 points per game. It took a while for them to get to the place where UVA needed them to be. "I think when I got here, my [defensive] instincts were fine," Jerome said. "I figured out the concepts of everything really quick. But my one-on-one slides needed a lot of work. "And, of course, they still do. But they've definitely gotten better." "I thought I was a five [out of 10] and I was really a two," Guy said simply. Now, they don't just work on defense. They also enjoy playing it. "We grind every day," Guy said. "We practice defense, we preach it, and when we get back and we rebound, do our jobs, it's hard for anybody to score on us. "When we're hitting on all cyl- inders, it's actually really fun to play defense like that." "It's so exciting because so many people don't appreciate it," Jerome countered. "It's like people don't talk about it, don't talk about us at all. And that's fine, we don't care. People call us boring, this and that. But we love it. "This is who we are and we're going to embrace it, our fans em- brace it, and that's what's most important. We've just got to keep playing like this and we feed off that energy." "We let them talk," Guy added. "We like being different. When we miss a shot on offense, we're not very worried about it because we know our defense is going to make up for it. "Most teams feed off energy when they're hitting shots, but we sort of do it when we're making other teams miss." Aside from spending so much time on the floor together, Jerome and Guy are also together off the court quite a bit, too. All of the players, Jerome said, live in the same complex at U-Heights, with six, includ- ing Jerome, living together while Guy lives three doors down, and team captains Isaiah "… I knew they had the 'it' factor, no question. I really was impressed with what they brought to the table." HEAD COACH TONY BENNETT ON RECRUITING BOTH GUY AND JEROME Jerome — who was averaging 11.6 points, 4.4 assists and 4.0 rebounds in ACC play through Jan. 30 — drained a crucial three-pointer with 37.6 seconds to go to help the Cavaliers notch their first win over Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium since 1995. PHOTO BY MATT RILEY/COURTESY UVA