Ahead of this week, UVA Basketball hadn’t lost back-to-back games by 22 or more since 2008.
That Virginia team finished 17-16, and a year later, Dave Leitao was relieved of his duties.
Ron Sanchez, with an interim tag, almost certainly doesn’t get the extra time that Leitao was given, with the security of being the full-fledged head coach, to try to figure things out.
If this season goes for Ron Sanchez like the 2007-2008 season went for Dave Leitao, Sanchez is a one-and-done coach.
Thing is, I’m not 100 percent certain that he gets that.
“This tournament was about that, literally, about trying to figure out where you are as a team. This is a great test. You know, you go up against two of the top teams in the country, some of the warts are going to show, you know,” Sanchez said after his team’s 80-55 loss to #22 St. John’s in the Bahamas on Friday night.
A night earlier, Virginia was humbled by #11 Tennessee, 64-42.
The warts were obvious: bad shooting, too many turnovers, breakdowns on defense leaving too many open shooters on the perimeter and too much at the rim.
Also obvious: both opponents were more athletic, more physical, more aggressive.
Sanchez tried to explain away the lack of physicality and aggressiveness from his kids to youth, and there’s something to that – Sanchez’s rotation for the St. John’s game included three freshmen and three sophomores, and just one senior, Taine Murray, who logged just 13 minutes off the bench.
The St. John’s rotation had two grad students, a senior and three juniors.
Tennessee, on Thursday, used a rotation with two grad students, four seniors and a junior.
Thing is, this year’s UVA group isn’t going to get any older, so Sanchez and his staff are going to have to find some fixes, and quick.
“What we realize is, you know, we have to continue to focus on eliminating losing, you know, and for us that means, you know, getting back in transition and eliminating easy baskets, you know, we got to do a much better job on the glass. And the third is, we got to take care of the basketball a lot better. You know, in the first half, I think they had 14 points out of our 10 turnovers, and, you know, those incisions are going to hurt you, so we have to do a much better job in those three areas. And that’s the one thing that was exposed in this tournament to me,” Sanchez said.
You could add in a fourth area, shot selection – Virginia isn’t getting nearly enough looks at the rim, and is taking far too many midrange jumpers.
I don’t like hearing Sanchez say, as he did in his postgame presser, that “the shot selection was actually good.”
“I think we have a very unselfish group,” Sanchez said. “They share the ball well, you know, and when you’re penetrating against athletic teams, and the rim is protected, the next best thing is, you know, a kick swing to a shot. And as long as we’re playing unselfish and playing for each other, I’m OK with the quality of shots.”
Oof, that’s bad.
Last thing from the presser: Sanchez was asked how his kids are taking the back-to-back thumpings.
“How they’re going to handle it is TBD, you know,” Sanchez said. “This is part of the journey. One thing I told them is that it’s a long season, and you know, the one thing that we did here is, we learned a lot about ourselves. The question is, how are we going to use that knowledge? Are we going to grow, you know, or are we going to wallow in it? It’s a young group, and it’s probably, you know, some of the toughest moments that some of these young guys have had, and I got to do a really good job of helping them navigate this new space.”
Left unsaid: Sanchez, with that interim tag, doesn’t have a lot of time to do what he needs to do.
Video: Tough weekend for UVA Basketball
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Chris Graham
