Report by Chris Graham
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Seven. Straight. Losses. The UVa. fan base didn’t enter the 2009-2010 season with anything in the way of expectations. The Cavs were picked to finish 12th in the 12-team Atlantic Coast Conference, and that seemed about right for a group that stunk up the junk enough in 2008-2009 to get the coach fired.
But then expectations materialized when the new coach, Tony Bennett, somehow, some way, cajoled the ragtag group he inherited from Dave Leitao to a 14-6 start that had the ‘Hoos at 5-2 in the ACC near the midway mark of the conference schedule.
People were talking NCAA Tournament all the sudden, and even narrow losses to Wake Forest and Virginia Tech had Virginia on the tournament bubble.
And then the wheels fell off the bandwagon. UVa. hasn’t been within 10 points of any of its last five opponents, and was really on in one of them, the 74-62 loss at Miami on Feb. 23, into the second half. The team’s leading scorer, Sylven Landesberg, missed the most recent debacle, the 67-49 home loss to Duke Sunday night, with a deep thigh bruise, and the team’s second leading scorer, Mike Scott, has gone ohfer the last two games, putting up goose eggs in the scoring column against both the ‘Canes and the Blue Devils.
So what do you do, Mr. Benett, to salvage any kind of good feeling from this season that once had so much promise?
“I think you try to find little victories, little things to say, Alright, these things we’ve done well. And you just try to make improvements, and focus on the quality of what’s going on. When there’s things that are quality, you recognize them, when they’re not, you obviously bring those out. And you keep working at them. You don’t get as hung up on the end result, because all that’s going to do is – it doesn’t help,” Bennett said in his weekly teleconference with ACC beat writers on Monday.
Bennett seems like the kind of guy to call a glass half-empty when there’s barely a drop of water in the bottom. He talked, for example, about the Duke loss, which saw the Cavs stumble out of the gate down 20-4 and not be able to recover to get the game back even within double digits afterward, as if there was a silver lining.
“We got beat by 18, 20 points, and it wasn’t pretty, but there are some things there where you say, OK, let’s build on those things, look at rotations, and then let’s practice, keep looking at those areas where we really need work, and keep attacking, shooting the ball,” Bennett said.
Not much else he can do at this point, you have to guess. But then Leitao, the guy who recruited the team that got him fired and is now sitting at 14-13 and is safely back in the second division in the ACC with the losing streak still ongoing, seemed at this point last season to have thrown the towel in, so there’s something to be said about Bennett’s otherwise unfounded optimism.
“That’s what every coach would tell his team to do. I think you just have to keep trying to demand it and reward the guys that are doing that in practice and certainly in the game,” Bennett said.
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Chris Graham
