Former UVA Basketball coach Tony Bennett didn’t do his long-time right-hand man, Ron Sanchez, any favors with the schedule that he left for him in the November-December portion of his interim-coach season.
“This team has been tested this season. This is one of the toughest nonconference schedules that I remember at this university, my time here, my time away. To have this many Top 25 teams in a nonconference schedule is a challenge,” Sanchez said on Wednesday, after his team lost its fourth straight game to a ranked team, with a 64-62 setback to #21 Memphis.
This one was at least competitive to the final buzzer.
The previous three losses – to #1 Tennessee, #7 Florida and St. John’s, which has since dropped from the national rankings, though the Johnnies are 9-2 this season – were all by 18 points or more.
They weren’t all blowouts from the opening whistle – Tennessee led by one at the half on its way to a 64-42 win; Florida nursed a one-point lead early in the second half on the way to an 87-69 win.
“I think we played a really competitive basketball game. I think we strung some possessions together there. I think we battled for 40 minutes, which is a big step for us, trying to get our competitive endurance to increase,” Sanchez said.
The Cavaliers (6-5) led this one by as many as 11, with the defense holding the Tigers to 28.8 percent shooting and 21 points in the opening 20 minutes, but the game turned on a strategic move at halftime by Memphis coach Penny Hardaway, who had his team trap in the halfcourt and pushed the button on full-court pressure after made and even missed baskets, to try to get Virginia out of its comfort zone.
“The pressure got us going to where our energy got up and our confidence got up, because we had lost confidence a little bit, because it’s hard to score against those guys. Once we started pressuring and getting them to turn the ball over, then we started making some shots,” Hardaway said.
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The momentum shift turned the 11-point deficit into a nine-point Memphis lead into the final six minutes.
Credit here to the Virginia kids, who had seen close games with Top 25 opponents turn into blowout losses a couple of times already this season, for fighting back.
“Just our resilience. We fought to the end of the game,” said Elijah Saunders, who had a team-high 15 points for the Cavaliers.
“We can play with the ranked teams. You know, we have enough,” Saunders said. “Now, this game we’ve played for longer, you know, we kept it close the whole game. And, you know, they had, that press kind of frustrated us, but we’re good enough and, you know, it’s just another learning experience.”
“Obviously, it’s been a tough stretch with some super talented teams that we played. Now, I think we’re getting better, and I think tonight, it really showed, just trying to go the whole game. I think in some of the other games, we’ve had good first halves, and it kind of got away on us. But yeah, I think it’s really preparing us well, and I think it showed our improvement,” said Taine Murray, who had 14 points in 26 minutes off the bench, to the utter surprise of Hardaway, who conceded in his postgame presser that he didn’t include Murray, a little-used fourth-year player, on his pregame scouting report.
“He was damn good tonight. His energy, he wasn’t just a three-point shooter. He drove the ball. He posted. He’s a really good player,” said Hardaway, who can be forgiven for the scouting-report omission.
Murray had put up goose eggs in four games already this season, was a healthy scratch in a fifth, the 70-60 win over Villanova last month, and he was averaging 2.6 points per game coming in.
“We didn’t talk a lot about Taine Murray at all, and then he came in the game and affected the game in a major way. He’s a really good player,” Hardaway said. “I don’t even know what year he is, because he wasn’t really on the scouting report. What year is he? He played like a senior, and he was ready for his moment, and he played phenomenal. He’s not just shooting threes. He made the three to make us honest, he drove the lane, got to the free throw line, he did it all. I was impressed.”
There were a lot of positives coming out of this one, but in the end, it’s another loss, and looking forward, there’s one more tune-up game, with American, on Sunday at JPJ, and then it’s the ACC, which is not the ACC of old.
This year’s ACC might be a three-bid league in March.
Going 0-4 against the tough nonconference gauntlet that Bennett left behind leaves no margin for error going forward.
So, when you hear Sanchez say, as he did tonight, “this is something that we’ll learn from, we will watch the video,” it’s beyond time to learn and watch video.
“This team is on its journey to becoming the best version of itself,” Sanchez said. “What it’s going to be, I don’t know. Only time will tell, you know. So, at this point, I’m really happy with the fact that we competed that hard.”
It’s going to take more than competing hard for Sanchez to get that interim tag off.
Just sayin’.
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