Reece Beekman Starts Senior Campaign With Strong Opening Performance

Beekman launched his senior year project to be a first round draft pick with a terrific showing in Virginia's win over Tarleton State

Reece Beekman has officially launched his senior year campaign project to become a first round pick in next June's NBA Draft. 

So far, so good. 

Beekman was the star of the season opener, tallying a game-high 16 points to lead Virginia to a dominant 80-50 win over Tarleton State. 

Box scores only go so far to convey how a player performed, but Beekman's stats were pretty great across the board. Beekman made five of nine field goal attempts for 16 points and also contributed four rebounds, seven assists, three steals, and a block. 

This season, Beekman should be the focal point of the UVA offense and that means more shots and even more facilitation that last season. That was certainly the case on Monday night as Beekman took and made the most shots on the team and was responsible for scoring or assisting on 12 of Virginia's 23 made baskets. 

With a higher usage rate, it's imperative that Beekman maintain one of the finer qualities of his game, which is good decision-making. Beekman was second in all of college basketball last season in assist to turnover ratio. He tallied seven assists against Tarleton State and didn't turn the ball over a single time. According to UVA's resident social media stats expert Danny Neckel, that's the 10th time in the last three seasons that Beekman has had at least five assists and no turnovers, most of any player in that stretch. 

On Monday, Reece Beekman had another game with at least 5 assists and no turnovers.

That is his tenth such game in the past three seasons, the most of any men’s college basketball player in that time frame.

— Danny Neckel (@DNeckel19) November 9, 2023

Tarleton State head coach Billy Gillispie, who formerly served as the head coach at Kentucky, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech, had high praise for what Beekman did to his team. 

"Totally under control, totally dominated the whole game. He made it easy for a lot of people," Gillispie said of Beekman's performance.

And while the rest of the team struggled from the free throw line, shooting an abhorrent 24/39 (61.5%) as a team, Beekman made six of his seven attempts from the charity stripe. 

The only blemish on Beekman's performance was that his three-pointers weren't falling. He went 0 for 3 from beyond the arc, which was particularly surprising to Tony Bennett, who says Beekman has made significant strides in progressing his perimeter jumper. 

"Reece has really improved his shot, [but] he didn't hit one," Bennett said after the game. "I thought Reece was really good today, just handling the ball."

Beekman played 27 minutes in Monday night's game. Beekman was +34 in the game, meaning that Virginia outscored Maryland Eastern Shore by 34 points in the 27 minutes he was on the floor. The only issue with that outcome is that the Cavaliers were actually outscored by four in the 13 minutes Beekman was off the floor. 

All that means is that Virginia will need Beekman to be on the floor for most of the game and that shouldn't be a problem for a guy who averaged 32.6 minutes per game last season and should probably be up around 35 or 36 minutes per game this season. 

Up next, Beekman and the Cavaliers will face their first big test of the season as Virginia heads down to Charlotte for a neutral-site matchup against Florida on Friday at 7pm. 

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