Home UVA Basketball: So much done wrong, and it was still a one-point loss
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UVA Basketball: So much done wrong, and it was still a one-point loss

Chris Graham
uva basketball andrew rohde
UVA Basketball guard Andrew Rohde. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

The word getting back to me from a group call involving several prominent UVA Basketball alums after tonight’s 75-74 loss to Virginia Tech: interim coach Ron Sanchez and his staff are guilty of coaching malfeasance for allowing that to happen the way it played out.

The kids, give them credit, fought back from 13 down in the last six minutes to get a shot on the rim from Andrew Rohde that didn’t go down as the buzzer sounded.

It shouldn’t have gotten anywhere near that stage, is the point here.

Where to start


uva basketball blake buchanan
UVA Basketball forward Blake Buchanan. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

Sanchez blundered into having his starting center, Blake Buchanan, saddled with three fouls in five minutes of playing time in the first half.

Buchanan, who had 16 points and nine rebounds in the win down at Miami on Wednesday, finished with a mere four and four in 15 minutes in this one.

The rule in Tony Bennett Basketball: your starting center gets a foul in the first half, he sits for a while, no questions asked.

Buchanan’s first foul was a cheapie at the 18:37 mark. The second one, a no-doubter, came at 16:24.


ICYMI


While discussing the foul calls on BB with the officials during a media timeout, Sanchez was hit with a technical foul.

Jaden Schutt hit both ends.

Two points gifted to the other side, in a game that you lost by one.

“I have a hard time with refs calling fouls within the first minute of the game. They impact the rotations of your team, especially when it’s not a play that impacts a score or a possession,” Sanchez explained his thinking on all of the above after the game.

“I do believe that refs got to have a decent feel for that,” Sanchez said. “If he was going to go score, and we fouled him at the rim, I go back to the Louisville game. We got to steal the first possession. Chucky Hepburn chases down Dai Dai (Ames). They don’t call the foul. I understood why, because the fans in that building went to see Chucky play. I get that, you know.

“If that’s a judgment call, then I’ll live with it, you know. But to have calls made at the 19-minute mark in the game, when it’s not an impact play, I had a hard time with that one,” Sanchez said.

The Ish … ish


uva basketball ishan sharma
UVA Basketball guard Ishan Sharma. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

Freshman Ishan Sharma got 2:07 of floor time in the second half after putting up eight points on 3-of-4 shooting, 2-of-3 from three, in 11 minutes in the first half.

Sharma missed his only jumper in that 2:07 stretch, and subbed out with 6:21 to go, not to return.

There was speculation on media row that the benching was somehow defense-related, which couldn’t be the case, because Sanchez kept throwing Dai Dai Ames out there – Ames, 22 games into what is likely a one-and-done season at Virginia, still hasn’t figured out the basics of the Pack Line defense, and Virginia Tech coach Mike Young exploited him almost to a point of it being criminal in the second half.

At least Ames gave Virginia 11 points on the other end.

Jacob Cofie, who got 27 minutes, had four points – on 1-of-6 shooting – and six rebounds, and was a turnstile on the defensive end.

There was a tiff between Sanchez and senior guard Taine Murray, who started the game, put up 10 points and six boards in 29 minutes, as the team headed to the locker room at halftime.

Whatever it was, Murray didn’t get back on the floor until the 12:44 mark of the second half.

After an eight-point first half, Murray had two after halftime, on one shot – a driving layup at the 4:37 mark.

Sanchez didn’t have to field any questions from the media on any of this postgame.

Am I missing anything here?


uva basketball isaac mckneely
UVA Basketball guard Isaac McKneely. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

Let’s see – I covered the Buchanan fouls; the tech that gave Tech two in a game they won by one; Sharma being glued to the bench because of defense, when nobody was playing defense; Cofie practically inviting Tech’s bigs to posterize him at the rim; Sanchez penalizing Murray and thus the team because Murray didn’t take to whatever it was that the coach was trying to relate as they headed off the floor at the break.

I feel like I’m leaving something out – yes, the one decent x’s and o’s thing the staff did all night.

As Cofie was at line shooting two with  5:07 to go, Sanchez whispered to Isaac McKneely, who then whispered his teammates, individually, to tell them that, next trip back on D, coach wanted them to play zone.

The gambit worked – Tech, confused, because Young would have no reason to prep his team for a 2-3 zone from Virginia, turned the ball over, leading to that one Murray driving layup; and next time down, the zone forced a bad miss, and a Tech loose-ball foul, which translated into a McKneely free throw.

So, two possessions playing zone, Virginia was plus-three.

Sanchez went back to man on the next possession, and Young exploited Ames by running a screen-and-roll with point guard Ben Hammond and his four guy, Tobi Lawal, to get Ames on Lawal on the switch.

Tech did this on the next two possessions: Lawal posted Ames up and made easy layups over him on both.


ICYMI


Next time down, Hammond, with Ames sticking to him on the pick-and-roll, drove Ames into the lane for a short jumper.

Those were Tech’s final six points, and you know why it was that Sanchez went to the zone in the first place? To take away those actions, which the Hokies had been running with ruthless efficiency.

And you know what you can’t do against a zone? Get Ames, at 6’1”, on the hip of Lawal, at 6’8”, on a switch on a pick-and-roll, for Lawal to bully to the bucket.

Sanchez did get asked directly about the move to go to the zone, and then drop back out of it.

Here’s the word salad:

“It was just to see if we could steal a possession. That’s what we were trying to do,” Sanchez said. “I keep encouraging the guys that, this is basketball, it’s a game of possessions. You know, if we can attack this thing just one possession at a time, just one at a time, and move on quickly. If you made a great play, move on, you know, you made a bad play, move on quickly, you know, because we’re gonna have about 50, 60 possessions, and you can’t get hung up on one. But yet, every single possession, it’s its own game, and the goal is to win more possessions than the opponent.

“That’s the lesson for these young guys. I’m trying to instill in them, OK, that every possession, it’s its own battle,” Sanchez said. “Being fatigued is not a reason to stop that possession. Could win or lose you the game. Then in the end, in the end, you take the combination of all those possessions, and if you win most of them, then you will have a chance to win.

“That’s what we’re trying to do, and this team is about 10 possessions away from being a completely different space, maybe five on offense, five on defense, seven on offense, three on defense, you do the math, but I think that’s how close they are, but it’s also how far they are, so that’s the lesson here for us.”

I still wonder, at the end of that soliloquy: why not make them figure out the zone before dropping back out of it?

Final item: timeouts


uva basketball ron sanchez
UVA Basketball coach Ron Sanchez. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

Virginia, you might have noticed, didn’t have any TOs left at the end, which is why you got the scramble drill in the final 5.9 seconds after Tech’s Mylyjael Poteat missed both ends of a two-shot foul.

Credit to Rohde for getting the ball into the paint and on the rim at the buzzer to give Virginia a chance.

Maybe if Sanchez doesn’t burn two timeouts earlier in the half to stop Tech momentum – at 12:44, after back-to-back threes by Ben Burnham and Brandon Rechsteiner gave the Hokies a 55-46 lead; and at 6:21, after a Schutt jumper capped a 9-0 run that ballooned the lead to 13, at 69-56 – I dunno, he has a chance to set up something more organized.

To be fair, the second one was necessary; Tech was about to blow the game open.

The first one: the media timeout was due less than a minute from when Sanchez burned it.

Would have been nice to have had that one in the back pocket to use to get a better look in the final seconds.

Again, no questions from the ink-stained wretches on the timeouts.

I did pick up a random comment from Sanchez in response to another question addressing Rohde being able to get a decent look on the final play.

“Without a timeout, I’m not sure what else we could have done,” Sanchez said. “With six seconds on the clock, you know, you don’t have time to do much. You just got to get the ball down the floor, hoping to get a shot at the rim and have a chance for an offensive rebound, you know. And I think that they executed that fairly well.”

Nothing there from the coach about why there were no timeouts left, and how that was something that the staff had mismanaged its way into.

Perspective


uva basketball taine murray
UVA Basketball guard Taine Murray. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

Virginia Tech, ranked 158th nationally, per KenPom, in adjusted offensive efficiency coming in, averaging 1.076 points per possession, put up 1.316 points per possession in this one, shooting 52.1 percent from the floor (season: 43.9 percent, 238th nationally) and connecting on 11-of-21 from three (season: 7.9-of-21.6 from three).

We’ve seen this Virginia team play 40 minutes of solid D – holding SMU, which averages 82.8 points per game, to 63 and 54 in the two UVA losses; Boston College scored 56 in a loss to Virginia a couple of weeks ago, and four days later put up 96 in an OT loss at UNC.

It’s just, from one game to the next, it’s either really good D, or really not good D.

“This is a young team, a lot of new faces as well. Still trying to put the defense together,” said McKneely, who had 19 points and seven assists in 37 minutes. “We’re working on it every day in practice, I feel like we’re getting better, but there’s stretches in the game where we can’t let them, you know, they hit a few shots in a row. We can’t let that happen. I’ll take some responsibility for that. I had some lapses here and there on defense, but you know, just all we can do is just continue to work in practice and get better, each and every day.”

The “young team” with “a lot of new faces” excuse isn’t valid 22 games into the season.

Ames, I mentioned, still hasn’t figured out how to funnel ball-handlers to the pack, the basic staple in on-ball defense in Virginia’s Pack Line.

Cofie is slow to get back to his man on post doubles.

Everybody seemed a step late today in closeouts on the perimeter.

Late closeouts lead to open threes; slow recoveries put guys on the free-throw line; Ames not playing the same D that everybody else is ruins any sense of connectivity needed to make the Pack Line work.

That’s coaching, or lack thereof.

Lost by one


uva basketball andrew rohde shooting
Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

All of that, and Rohde had the ball on the rim at the buzzer, and if it drops, Virginia wins.

“You live with that shot,” said McKneely, sitting at the interview table beside Rohde, who added, succinctly: “It felt good, you know, felt like it was going in.”

For a guy that the fan base seems to feel like it has to hate – Kihei Clark isn’t around anymore; it was somebody’s turn – Rohde played his ass off.

The junior missed the Miami game with a lower-leg injury, and he was noticeably limping, with a sleeve on his right calf, and even had to leave the floor for a stretch in the first half to get it looked at.

Sanchez said Rohde was limited in practice, so for the kid to gut out 32 minutes, finishing with 12 points and seven assists vs. no turnovers, keep hating on him, I guess.

I’m how many ever words into this, and just now getting to how the team’s second-leading scorer, Elijah Saunders, was out for a second straight game with a foot injury, and per Sanchez postgame, he won’t be ready for Monday’s game at Pitt, either.

That was why the early foul trouble for Buchanan was such a big issue.

Buchanan was limited to 15 minutes, Cofie got 27, but didn’t do much with them.

Redshirt freshman Anthony Robinson was productive in his 15 minutes off the bench – six points, four boards, and he plays defense and sets screens.

All of this, all of it, and it was a one-point loss.

Feeling the heat


uva basketball ron sanchez
UVA Basketball coach Ron Sanchez. Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

The season isn’t going the way anyone thought it would – from Bennett retiring, quitting, however you want to term it, two weeks before the opener; the team not only not growing from an impressive early win over Villanova, but clearly regressing.

The writing is on the wall for Sanchez, who, it’s clear, will not be retained once the season is over in five weeks.

With his fate obvious, Sanchez has been prone to waxing philosophic of late on how things are playing out.


ICYMI


“If you approach this thing as it is, which is a gift, I have the opportunity to coach a team, the opportunity to play a game in John Paul Jones Arena in front of that crowd, the opportunity to represent this university in this conference, deflation shouldn’t exist, only gratitude. If your highs and lows are going to come based on the scoreboard, then you’re going to live a miserable life, you know,” Sanchez said after Saturday’s loss.

“So, for us, it’s continuing to appreciate what we have, living in the pillar of thankfulness,” Sanchez said. “Yes, we want to win, you know. My answer to your question would be, what an inexperienced young group goes through before you can have success, you know, everybody wants to get there, but nobody wants to go through the hard these lessons that we’re learning right now. They are going to benefit these guys later, you know, and that’s the goal, just to make these guys better as basketball players”

Which is all well and good


uva basketball banner
Photo: Mike Ingalls/AFP

There’s a national championship banner hanging in the rafters at JPJ, from 2019, and the people who write the checks that pay the bills don’t want to screw up the post-Tony Bennett era the way UVA Athletics screwed up the post-Terry Holland era in 1990.

Virginia Basketball spent 20 years in the basketball wilderness between Holland and Bennett; the focus of UVA Athletics and its funders is on limiting the damage post-Bennett, if possible, to just this one down year.

But that’s not to say that we don’t want to win in the here and now.

The alums who saw all of what we saw tonight in the loss to a not-good Virginia Tech team, and chatted about it on a group call after, called it coaching malfeasance; in my postgame comments on the live blog, I called it coaching malpractice.

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham, the king of "fringe media," a zero-time Virginia Sportswriter of the Year, and a member of zero Halls of Fame, is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].